


The Winter King's Ward

by headlesshorsepossum



Category: Original Work
Genre: A General Atmosphere Of Sexual Threat, Amputation, Defeated and Trophified, Eventual Happy Ending, Faux-Affectionate Villain, M/M, Original Character Death(s), Original Fiction, Past Abuse, Possession, Princes In Distress, Public Humiliation, Royalty, Slow Burn, Whump, original whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:42:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 25,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23431867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/headlesshorsepossum/pseuds/headlesshorsepossum
Summary: A sorcerer king invades a prosperous southern kingdom and takes the King’s City. While he obviously kills the southern king immediately, he figures there might yet be a use for his sons. In the meantime, he publicly grants custody of the King’s Heir to his ward and apprentice, with the intention of making the court uncomfortable. Which means the Prince’s task is simple: survive whatever is thrown at him, and win over the Winter King’s Ward.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 38





	1. Chess Piece

**Author's Note:**

> I've never posted on ao3 before. anyway here's some whump, follow me on tumblr at thewhumperinwhite.tumblr.com 
> 
> Chapter One: The Winter King's forces make themselves at home, and Thorne receives a gift.

Morden wastes little time in establishing the dead King’s office as his command center. The lower levels of the castle are cold stone, and anyway there is blood and a few bodies that have yet to be cleaned, and Thorne is happy to follow the captain of Morden’s guard up to the higher levels with their carpeted hallways and lush staterooms, and this fairly grand office, in which some thoughtful orderly has already lit a fire. As soon as Thorne enters the room the blaze gets to work drying the damp southern air hanging thickly in the room.

“The White Crane wants to see you,” Raptor says. Raptor is the largest of Morden’s Falconers, invaluable to the invasion, which at the moment means he is not happy to be running messages to Thorne. “Says to wait for him here. Finishing other work.” And he’s gone in a swirl of the black cape all the Falconer’s wear. 

“Good talk,” Thorne says after him, and then he gets to work.

First thing is the carpet. Morden likes luxurious pile in his private rooms, but in a command center like this he’ll want to hear his boots click on the ground, and make sure everyone else hears it too. Thorne rolls the carpet up as tight as he can and then opens the slats covering the window. The courtyard is below. Thorne tosses out the carpet.

The desk, next. There are few personal touches, though he has it on good authority that this was the dead King’s personal study. There’s an inkwell, mostly empty; a few identical quills; a few notes in shaky, laborious handwriting. The paper on top is unfinished, as if abandoned in a hurry. Thorne flips through the notes to ascertain they contain no useful information–they seem to be largely expense reports–and then he tosses them into the fire.

The walls, then.

There is a large painting on the wall behind the desk, just beyond life size. It shows a man who can only be the Lion of Colomur, his one baleful brown eye blazing from the canvas as though the painter had personally insulted him. The woman seated beside him must be the Queen, then; her expression is mild enough to border on vacuous. The King has his hand on the shoulder of the older Prince, who has his mother’s blue-grey eyes–though Thorne suspects the clarity of the color is flattery on the painter’s part–and the waist-length sweep of blonde hair Craetan custom demands. The younger Prince is beside him, looking fidgety and uncomfortable.

It’s far too large for the fire. Thorne has levered it mostly out the window when he hears his Master’s low chuckle behind him and startles enough that he nearly overbalances and launches himself out with it.

Thorne spins to find Morden leaning in the study’s doorway, studying him with cool amusement, his cigarette-holder perched in one black-gloved hand.

“Don’t stop on my account, darling,” Morden says, waving him onward. “I was enjoying watching you work.”

Thorne lets the painting fall to the stone courtyard below with a crash and a few shouts, and bows hastily. “Master,” he tells the now-bare floor. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Evidently not,” Morden says, straightening to glance around the room appreciatively. “You made quick work, my dear,” he says, running a hand over the desk. “Not bad furnishings in here. A little decoration and it will be nearly workable.” He smiles at Thorne. “You know my taste, darling. Good work.”

Thorne feels almost light-headed. “Yes, Master,” he says breathlessly. “I’m pleased I could help.” He waits, fidgets, tells himself to be happy with this and not spoil a moment of praise.  
Morden rolls his eyes. “Go on, my dear, if you’re going to make your dissatisfaction so obvious you had as well spit it out.”

Thorne shakes his head rapidly. “No dissatisfaction, my Master,” he says. He bites his lip. Morden is beginning to look impatient, but it’s hard to stop. “It’s only that I feel I could be of more help to you,” he says finally, unable to help himself.

To Thorne’s knee-weakening relief, Morden—smiles, raising a black brow slyly. “Do you,” he says, amused. “An interesting coincidence, my dear. It happens that I’ve brought you a gift.”   
Thorne blinks at him, startled. “A gift, Master?” It’s not that he isn’t used to gifts from Morden— everything he has is one, down to the shirt on his back. But Thorne hasn’t done anything particularly impressive during the capture of Colomur City, so it isn’t as though he’s earned anything. 

“Just so, dear one,” Morden says. “Something valuable. Something I may need in the future, darling, and you must remember that when you break it in.” His grin widens, apparently at some joke Thorne is missing.

“Break it in,” Thorne repeats, feeling he is missing the joke.

“Hold, now, my parrot,” Morden says, nearly laughing, “the men should be along with it presently.” He raises his voice toward the study door. “Come now, gentlemen, don’t dawdle.”

The soldiers who have apparently been waiting in the hall know better than to test Morden’s good mood, and crowd into the study so swiftly that the white figure between them, shoved abruptly into the room, stumbles and would fall if each guard did not have a firm hold of one of his arms above the elbow.

Thorne stares at the stranger. He is more clearly Craetan than almost anyone Thorne has seen in the palace, with pale southern skin and a proud straight nose, though his eyes are an unlikely stormy-sky grey. And, Thorne realizes, the Craetan nobility wore their hair waist-length or longer, and this boy’s ash-blonde hair was shorn messily around his ears— there was a nick in the shell of one, actually, as though someone had been overzealous with the scissors.

This thought combines with the sight of the boy’s right wrist, with bandages and an iron-covered stump where the hand should be, and Thorne knows who the boy is.

When Thorne gives a visible double-take before he can stop himself, Morden laughs, his silken voice almost merry.

“Quite right, darling,” he says, striding over to lay a hand on the boy’s shoulder. The boy doesn’t move away, but Thorne sees all of his muscles tense. “I’ve brought you an important chess pieces,” Morden says, smiling widely at the boy, who watches him warily. “Not a king or queen, certainly, but he may make a suitable rook, at least.” Morden turns his grin on Thorne. “It’s a pity there’s no piece for a Prince.”

Morden nods at the soldiers holding the Prince of Craetalia’s arms, and they release their respective grips and take a step back to hover behind his shoulders, looking ready to leap back on him at any time. Thorne remembers vaguely that the Craetan Prince was difficult to catch. Right now he is shivering slightly in a white smock and trousers that are badly torn at the knees. Someone must have made the manacles he is wearing specially to account for his newly missing hand. He might weigh half of what Thorne himself does, but even that seems generous.

The guards hover. One of them has been holding the boy’s arm so tightly that Thorne can see a large bruise already purpling through a tear in his sleeve. Thorne feels something when the boy shivers— amusement, presumably.

Morden leaves the boy standing suddenly alone, and crosses to stand with Thorne, before the fire.

“You were ready for more responsibility, I believe you said,” Morden reminds him, and then says, loud enough to carry, “I’m only lending him to you, now darling. I expect you’ll find some use for him in the meantime.”

The boy’s face doesn’t change, still mostly blank. Thorne is about to be impressed when an explanation occurs to him.

“I want him cleaned up before I address my new city, darling,” Morden says to Thorne in a lower voice, with a private grin Thorne isn’t sure he understands. “Think you can handle that?”  
Thorne has no idea where any of the facilities for cleaning the Craetan Prince might be, but he knows far better than to ask Morden about the particulars. He bows deeply instead. “Of course, Master. I will treat your gift with great care.”

Morden’s eyes fairly sparkly with mirth. “See that you do, darling,” he says into Thorne’s ear, then he clicks out of the room in his heeled boots, snapping once on his way past the guards, so that they scurry to follow him out, leaving Thorne alone to survey the Summer Prince, standing stiffly just where the guards have left him.

After a moment of silence besides the fire crackling in the grate, Thorne smirks and asks the Prince, a trifle sardonically, “Do you speak Leisevan?”

This is something of a joke, though not one he expects a Craetan to understand. The people of the Continent don’t call Leisevan “the demon tongue” solely as a judgement on its speakers, though that’s certainly part of it; the language is notoriously foreign to any tongue not raised on it.

The Craetan Prince looks at him with eyes like smoky glass; Thorne has a moment of doubt that he can even see with them. Then he blinks and seems to become animate (though just barely) before Thorne’s eyes.

“Very little,” the pale Prince says, and Thorne’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. No one would mistake him for a native speaker (even without the help of his very Craetan face), but his pronunciation really isn’t bad, all things considered.

“Your accent is less hideous than I might have anticipated,” Thorne remarks, generously, and also using somewhat more syllables than are strictly necessary.

The bound Prince blinks at him, with no change of expression. “Thank you,” he says after a moment.

Thorne laughs at the blank expression on the boy’s face before he can stop himself. “That was a guess!”

The boy frowns very slightly, and doesn’t respond, which is as good as an admission.

“I’ll take my turn now, then,” Thorne says, in Craetan, grinning. “How fits my tongue to your Summer words, Your Highness?”

The boy releases a breath visibly, seeming to hear his own tongue as either a relief or a blow. He blinks a few times, as though reordering his thoughts.

“You speak very well,” he says tonelessly. Thorne waits for more, but none seems forthcoming. It occurs to Thorne that the set of the boy’s shoulders has not relaxed and it may be only partly fear, and partly the posture of one so exhausted he is keeping himself upright through stubborn will alone.

Upon examination, the boy is— worse than filthy. There is blood dried in his messily-cropped hair, and visible on the collar of his shift where it must have run down from his nicked ear. And when Thorne steps closer he can see that the shift itself is clinging to his narrow chest and partially transparent with sweat and grime. The boy sways slightly at Thorne’s approach, and closes his eyes.  
Presentable, his master said. It’s a bit of a tall order— but Thorne is ready for any task his Master gives him.

“Come on, Your Highness,” Thorne says briskly, in his workmanlike Craetan. There isn’t any real reason he should worry about avoiding bruises when he takes hold of the Prince’s pale arm— but there isn’t any real reason to make them worse, either. “Which way to the washroom?”


	2. The Winter King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After three weeks of siege rations, it's all over in less than an hour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (This takes place about two hours before chapter 1.)

After three weeks of siege rations, it is all over in less than an hour.

Andry, with the House’s magic in his hands, holds back what he thinks must be a respectable number of soldiers—kills what must be a respectable number of men—before a sharp blade he does not see swings suddenly down from the side and takes his sword hand, and time slows so that he can watch the sword of his fathers arc through the air, the cacophony of his father’s men dying around him suddenly silent, a split second where he sees the sudden gout of blood in the air before he feels any pain. Then it comes all at once, his arm on fire, and he goes to his knees, the screams of men he has known since birth crashing back so loud he will never know afterwards whether he actually screamed or not when they took his hand.

He looks up, trying to hold his wrist as tightly as he can, and can see that the House’s magic has not left him, is still arcing through the black-clad northern soldiers like giggling lightning, and the surge of hope he feels in response is so strong he almost makes it back to his feet— 

Then a gauntleted fist comes down on the top of his head with the force of a boulder, and he does not even get to see it end.

He is not unconscious for very long, because when he wakes the hall is still filled with bodies, the invaders indistinguishable from his father’s men. He is on the floor and a figure in black is leaning over him, cinching something around his wrist so tight that Andry makes it halfway up to a sitting position in his answering spasm of pain, though he immediately falls back, the room a nightmarish whirl of gore and black fabric around him.

When he can hear again Andry hears a silky, irritated voice speaking words he cannot understand, and for a moment he panics, thinking he must have been hit one time too many and lost the capacity for speech— and then the spinning room slows and he realizes that the man is simply speaking the invaders’ language, far too quickly for his scant few weeks of study to follow.

“Sit him up,” the voice barks then, and then a word Andry doesn’t know, and the man who is kneeling beside him pushes him roughly up onto his knees.

There is a man standing before him with his head tilted to the side, watching him with unreadable eyes the color of a bottomless pit. The man is very pale, almost bone-colored, and dressed in black from his neck to his feet, a black cloak tossed casually over one shoulder; in the center of the gory wreck of Andry’s home, he looks unnervingly spotless. His hair is straight and long and velvety-black. He looks no older than twenty.

“Do you know who I am, little Prince?” the man says, in flawless Craetan.

Andry has never seen him before, but he can almost see the shimmer of magic around his temples and wrists. He nods, not trusting himself to speak, and the man smiles slowly, and shakes his head.  
“I would like to hear you say it, I think,” the man in black says.

Andry stares at him, letting frank disbelief show on his face before he can think better of it.

The man says another word Andry doesn’t understand, and large man in a similar black cape stands from where he has been moving the body of one of his fellows, dropping his cargo immediately, and looks at the man in black. The man smiles and gestures at Andry, raising one brow, almost coyly.

The big man nods, takes two steps closer, and punches Andry in the mouth with a gauntleted fist.

Andry rocks back against whoever is holding him, raising his one remaining hand to cover his face, and would fall right back to the floor if the smaller man, the one who bound his wrist, didn’t hold him up; he hears voices but cannot even read their tone; his mouth is full of blood.

“Do you know who I am?” The man’s voice sounds exactly the same as before, except that now he is smiling.

“You’re Morden Crane,” Andry says immediately, unable to keep the words in anymore than he can keep the blood from pouring from his mouth. The man supporting him is holding his damaged arm; his other hand is still up to protect his face. He forces himself to lower it, to sit up on his knees as best he can. “You’re Morden Crane, of the Leisevan Expanse.”

Morden Crane looks pleased with this response, or with watching the blood running down Andry’s chin. “Very good, Summer Prince. But I think you may call me Morden Crane of Craetalia, now.” He smiles wider. “Or Your Majesty, perhaps.”

Andry feels his own face twist, draws himself up, opens his mouth.

“Your brother is looking for you, by the way,” Morden Crane says lightly. “Shall I take you to see him?”

Those words hit Andry like a blow to the stomach. He breathes out, forcing his pride out with the air. He bows his head. “I— would be grateful,” he says softly, watching blood drip onto his remaining hand, clenched into a fist in his lap.

Morden Crane says nothing. When Andry looks up, he raises his eyebrows expectantly, his smile light, teasing. Andry forces himself to meet the man’s bottomless eyes.

“Your Majesty,” Andry adds hollowly.

“Lovely,” Morden Crane says, already turning away. “Take him to my new stateroom,” he says to the man with Andry’s blood on his gauntlet; Andry squeezes his eyes shut, and sinks his teeth into his already-bloody lip to keep from crying out when the man hauls him to his feet. His arm is on fire, and his head is pounding.

“Wait.” Morden pauses, and turns back on his heel, looking at Andry thoughtfully.

“All that Craetan hair is ridiculous,” Morden Crane says dismissively. “Get rid of it.”

Andry's hair has never been cut before. It reaches his waist; it is the same color as his father’s. 

The big man tangles his gauntleted fist in Andry’s hair, and he pushes him back to his knees. 

Morden Crane blows the big man a kiss before he turns away.


	3. Presentable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andry is still upright. And Asher is alive, with the tacit understanding that he will remain so in the short term, pending Andry’s cooperation. That means the current situation is survivable. So Andry will survive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for: Forced stripping, though it’s not sexualized; nonconsensual touching; noncon isn’t explicitly threatened but Andry worries about it; dissociation; amputation.

Andry is still upright. And Asher is alive, with the tacit understanding that he will remain so in the short term, pending Andry’s cooperation. That means the current situation is survivable. So Andry will survive.

By the time Andry is seated beside a washbasin in one of the guest suites, he is genuinely not certain how he arrived there. He remembers a string of images and sensations— twelve years of fencing lessons spinning away from him in a gout of blood; the sharp pain of scissors slicing carelessly through the shell of his left ear; Asher sitting stiffly on their mother’s bed, surrounded by soldiers in black armor— but cannot arrange them into any meaningful order.

The man who has brought him here seems to be Crane’s personal servant. He cannot be much older than Andry himself, though he is slightly larger; his skin is the light warm brown Andry understands is common among Leisevans, but his hair is a dull silver, and his eyes are an improbable bright gold. He has not told Andry his name. 

Crane’s servant gives the room a cursory examination, sets down a bucket of clean water and a set of clean clothes, locates a pile of drying cloths. Then he turns his faery eyes on Andry with the same thoughtful frown.

“What a mess,” the man mutters, in Leisevan.

There have been a variety of hands on Andry today. They have tangled in his hair, torn off the overshirt bearing his father’s colors, clamped a modified set of manacles marked with a strange rune over his severed wrist. They have been, to a one, rough and impersonal, and painful more than not. Whatever is coming now is… more intimate, in a way that makes Andry’s chest slightly tight, but ultimately only more of the same. Survivable.

Crane’s servant sighs, and then he drops to his knees in front of Andry and dips a cloth in the water bucket. Where Andry is seated, on a low stool beside the washbasin, the man is now looking up at him; Andry cannot pinpoint why that startles him the way it does.

Andry has not had access to a looking glass in over twenty-four hours, so he knows little except that his face and back are tacky with blood, his hair matted with it. The man frowns up into Andry’s face, and Andry stares numbly back, and then the man reaches up and presses the cloth to the cut at Andry’s hairline where the soldier’s armored fist struck him to the floor.

Andry draws in a sharp breath before he can stop himself, and then tenses for the answering blow he knows must be coming— but the servant just hums mildly in response, and cups his other hand around Andry’s jaw to steady his head, still with that thoughtful frown on his face. The cloth stings against the cut, but the man does not dig it in, only wipes the blood from his forehead, his touch businesslike but not rough.

The man cleans the blood from Andry’s forehead and then his lips and chin, and when his warm hands work their way into Andry’s uneven, blood-matted hair, Andry feels his eyes slide shut and lets out a long breath without really meaning to.

When the cloth presses against Andry’s damaged ear, he holds on to the sharp sting of the soap against the cut and forces himself all the way back to awareness, and opens his eyes halfway to look at Crane’s servant, whose face is very close to his.

“What is your name?” Andry asks him, his voice coming out low and husky. 

The man pauses in his ministrations, meets Andry’s eyes with some suspicion. “It’s Thorne,” he says after a moment. Then he moves on to scrubbing blood from the side of Andry’s throat, eye contact lost. “And you’re Andry Fourshield, the Summer Prince.” He smirks, a shadow of Morden’s vicious grin, and Andry can’t hold back a small shiver. “Shall I address you as ‘Your Highness’?”  
It’s obvious he expects Andry to straighten and demand respect. Andry drops his eyes humbly instead. “Just Andry, please,” he says quietly.

Thorne laughs quietly, squeezing the bloody rag over the bucket. “They didn’t tell me you were so modest, Your Highness,” he says, and then he pulls a delicate silver key from his pocket and unlocks the iron cover Crane has clamped over the stump of Andry’s wrist. 

Thorne looks down at Andry’s ruined sword arm with frank curiosity, loosely holding Andry’s wrists in his lap. The stump is largely closed over, a mass of scar tissue where a working hand used to be. Andry looks down at it too, ignoring the low buzzing that has begin in his ears.

Thorne lets out a low whistle. “Heron knows his shit,” he says— and he says it in Craetan, like he’s addressing it to Andry. He even looks up at Andry, interested for apparently the first time. “Does it even still hurt?”

Andry stares at him. What answer does the man expect?

“Better without the cover,” he says honestly. “The cold air helps.”

Thorne’s brief open expression slams shut like a castle drawbridge. Andry curses himself.

“I’m sure,” Thorne says flatly, dropping Andry’s hands. “Don’t get any ideas, those cuffs are going back on the second you’re presentable.” Thorne gets to his feet, and nods curtly at Andry. “Stand up.”  
Andry looks at him, feeling like he’s failed a test without knowing the questions. But the moment has passed, now; he pulls himself up, unsteadily, using the washbasin for support. 

When Andry is upright, Thorne tosses him a wet cloth. “Alright, Your Highness. Strip down and clean yourself up.”

Andry stares at him, his ears ringing. “And—what, you’re just going to stand there and stare at me?”

Thorne snorts, unimpressed. “Yes.”

Andry frowns. “I have no reason to run. Your soldiers have filled this place to the rafters; where would I go?”

Thorne shakes his head, amused. “Nowhere, Your Highness. Because I’ll be watching you.”

Andry looks at him. The man is his own age, and handsome in a sharp-toothed, yellow-eyed way. Andry is far too tired to decide if this makes stripping in front of him better or worse. He—does not want to, either way. But, depending on this man’s rank, any goodwill he can earn with compliance is worth far more than the negligible chance of escape offered by one moment of reduced supervision in a castle full of enemy soldiers. And far more than any lingering self-respect he might still have, Andry reminds himself firmly. He tugs his undershirt off over his head.

Thorne eyes Andry’s bared chest with interest, but his expression is more curious than lascivious. Andry can see him taking note of the pattern of bruises along his side where a booted soldier kicked him when he was already on the floor, and the prominence of his ribcage after three weeks of siege rations. 

Andry is— annoyed at his own relief. It would be useful if Crane’s servant wanted him, he tells himself. He still turns his back when he tugs down his breeches.

Andry half-expects Thorne to ask about the scars across his back and leave him to reconcile his need to earn the man’s sympathy with his deep desire not to answer, but Thorne just watches him silently until he has wiped as much blood and grime from his body as he is likely to without a full soak in the washtub, and then tosses him the clean set of clothes without a word. That shouldn’t be a relief either, and he certainly shouldn’t feel grateful, but in his bone-deep exhaustion, Andry is willing to allow himself the easy out, this one last time.


	4. The Lion's Mane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morden Crane has worked hard to get where he is, and now he is ready to address the people of Colomur, whom he owns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for: minor character death, taunting wrt a loved one’s death (for a given value of loved one), uh decapitation also I guess. Also Villain POV and i feel like Morden kind of deserves his own warning.
> 
> (Also, in case it isn’t clear: the former king is Audoine, called The Lion Of Colomur; Colomur is the capital city and Craetalia is the country)

Morden Crane has worked hard to get where he is, and now he is ready to address the people of Colomur, whom he owns.

The more cooperative of the dead Lion’s guard have informed him that the old man has not addressed his people in years, appearing only at feasts and public fights. He has spoken through a Herald from the grand balcony for all official pronouncements, in the last year rarely even deigning to join him in the public view. That will do nicely; to hear of their new Sovereign from their old Herald is the sort of continuity he can imagine calming the common people, and at the moment it would be convenient for them to remain calm. He doesn’t only intend to conquer Colomur, he also intends to rule it; burning the city down will not lend itself for a livable long-term environment. Also, he finds killing unarmed citizens fairly boring except in special circumstances.

The Herald is not difficult to convince. Morden had thought it possible that his aura might not have the same automatic punch here that it does in Leisevan, where magic is rare and distrusted enough that the mere knowledge he can wield it makes him an immediate object of awe; Craetans have their quaint House Magics and he had resigned himself to a few days spent vaporizing servants or similar to establish himself as a magical presence, but apparently magically castrating the bearer of their House’s favor has done the trick, because the Herald’s token resistance crumbles the second Morden raises his eyebrows and lets his magic tinge the air slightly violet, and he practically begs to be Morden’s temporary voice. Morden nods, always gracious as long as it suits him, and wonders with private amusement if they know that cutting off the boy’s hand wouldn’t have done the trick on its own. It was pleasingly showy, he’ll grant; he ought to give Raven a raise.

Speaking of showy, here comes the little Prince himself, with Morden’s own Thorne leading him along and practically wagging his tail. Morden smiles at his Thorne, affectionately. The Summer Prince’s current appearance is ideal for the task at hand—clean, but swaying from exhaustion, looking younger than he is with his shorn hair and his manacled hands. His head is lowered respectfully, all the better to show the rings under his eyes from lack of sleep and the sharp cut of his cheekbones from starving himself. Morden has heard that while no one would have dreamed of cutting the royal family’s rations, the prince put himself on the same limits as the soldiers out of solidarity. It’s all very romantic. He should have a painting commissioned.

“Very good, darling,” he tells Thorne, and Thorne’s face lights up like it did when he was twelve and Morden offered him a seat on his warhorse. “Unlock those manacles for me, won’t you?”

The Summer Prince looks up at him, surprised, while Thorne leaps to obey. Morden meets the Prince’s eyes, and watches him go still like a mouse mesmerized by a snake. 

“I’m inviting you to help me address your people, little Prince,” Morden says softly. “It’s a great honor for you, as I’m sure you can imagine. Also, a wonderful opportunity for you to tell them all how well you’ve been treated.” He narrows his eyes, just a little. “I’m putting their lives in your hands— well, hand.” That breaks his attempt at being serious; the little Prince’s stoicism is simply too charming for him not to laugh at it. “Do you understand, Prince of Summer?”

The little Prince looks at Morden, his pale Southern eyes wide and reflective, and then his face goes carefully blank and, bless him, he bows his golden head and says, “I understand, Your Majesty.”

Thorne blinks at the Prince in surprise; Morden feels a grin growing on his own face. He steps forward and slips one finger under the Prince’s chin, and raises his head to meet his eyes. The Prince lets him, his face utterly blank. “You remembered,” Morden says in a caressingly delighted tone, and it has the desired effect of sending a visible shiver of horror down the Prince’s spine, though in his triumph he is willing to give the little thing credit for covering it well.

“Darling,” Morden says to Thorne, “help him out onto the balcony with us, would you?” Thorne doesn’t even know the game he’s playing, dear thing, but he is so in tune with Morden’s desires that he puts his hand in the small of the Prince’s back and guides him forward in just the right way. Gods, Morden’s done some great fucking work with that boy, though he says it himself.

Morden looks out at the gathered crowd. They look, by and large, harried and exhausted (one would almost think they’d been “invited” out of their houses by large men with swords), and they watch Morden with wary tension when he emerges out onto the balcony. Then Thorne leads out their golden Prince, and there are audible gasps; someone in one of the buildings lets out a long wail like a paid mourner. It’s wonderful. Morden smiles at the Prince and opens an arm in a generous inviting gesture, and the Prince comes obediently to join him at the balcony rail, standing a respectful distance away. He really is very good at this; he was _born_ to be a hostage. The Herald sidles nervously out after him, followed by Morden’s Falconers, a row of black behind their little tableau, just as a reminder.

Morden nods at the Herald, and the man stands desperately at attention and makes his pronouncement. Morden has let him compose it himself, figuring at worst he’ll have a reason to feed the man to the dogs these barbarians keep in the stables, but he does a perfectly adequate job, actually; perhaps Morden will keep him for a while. Morden watches the crowd, a few hundred eyes darting between him and their Prince, who stands with his head bowed, not looking at his people.

When the Herald is finished talking about their Gracious New Sovereign, Morden smiles broadly at Andry Fourshield and invites him to address the people.

The Prince looks at him, startled, and then blankly down at the people filling the square, a hundred hands clutched in front of a hundred patriotic breasts; at least fifty children hide behind their mothers’ skirts, confused into stillness by the tense silence of the square. For a moment his face creases as if in pain, but then it smooths out and he takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. When he speaks his voice is calm and just loud enough to carry.

“People of Colomur, and of Craetalia,” the Summer Prince says. “The House of Fourshield is grateful to you for your generations of service. We would not see you come to harm on our account.” Morden watches a few faces in the crowd crumple, in grief or disbelief. “Lord Crane has been merciful where he has had the opportunity.” He raises his voice, meeting the swimming eyes of several in the crowd. “We will all face hardships and restrictions in the coming days. The world we have known is changed. We— “ He cuts off, his voice breaking slightly; Morden could not have scripted it better. Then the boy’s face hardens and he raises his head; despite ruined hair and darkening bruises, he looks every inch a Prince. “We will endure. We will endure this, as we always have.” He softens, looks down at the crowd directly in front of him, as if in apology, and finishes with a quiet, “Thank you.”

It’s perfect. The crowd quiets, the proudest of them cowed into silence by their Prince’s calm face and straight back. They are looking up at him with wide wet eyes, and it is clear that they love him. Morden can feel his good mood souring.

“Wise words,” Morden says, his voice just slightly amplified by magic to echo around the square; no harm in a few dramatics. “Your Prince says rightly that I have been merciful where I have been allowed. I have a gift for you all, so that you will not forget my mercy, or its _limits.”_

Morden turns back towards his Falconers. The Prince obligingly half-turns as well. Raptor, at their center, gives him a questioning look, and Morden indicates the Summer Prince with a slight nod of his head. Raptor nods and opens the large silk bag he has been holding and tosses its contents to the Summer Prince.

The Summer Prince is caught entirely off guard, and presumably the last time he tried to catch anything he had two hands. In any case he fumbles and would drop his father’s severed head entirely to the ground if Thorne did not helpfully catch it for him.

Thorne holds the Lion of Colomur’s head up over his head by its golden hair, grinning. Some of the gathered crowd scream. The Summer Prince does not, but he does go white to the lips and lose all his breath as though he’s been kicked in the stomach. And that’s enough for Morden, at least for now.


	5. To Bid You All Welcome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morden Crane throws a party. The Summer Princes are encouraged to attend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for: public humiliation, discussion of minor character death, references to amputation, brief dehumanization, implied dissociation (like, Andry’s definitely dissociating but we’re not in his head when it happens), Collars, noncon sexualization?, Morden Crane’s Creepy Vibes.

They crop Asher’s hair short, too. 

That— hurts Andry, almost more than his own, all the more so because Asher takes it so much in stride. He raises his chin to look Andry in the eyes and tells him seriously that it will be easier to take care of, since he has not been permitted a hairbrush. He speaks similarly of limited rations he is given: if he is not allowed to go outside, he hardly needs three hearty meals to carry him through the days; they go faster when he sleeps more, as he does when he’s hungry.

That one Andry knows is a lie—no one sleeps better hungry—but Andry does not waste their single allotted hour together trying to weaken Asher’s stiff upper lip. Asher waits for Andry in the small, mostly-emptied guest quarters he’s been given with his head held high, and when Andry pulls him into a bone-crushing hug he grumbles as though he doesn’t want it at the same time that his narrow hands make tight fists on the back of Andry’s shift.

“You look terrible,” Asher tells him when Andry sits beside him on the narrow bed. He looks down at the iron manacle that covers Andry’s wrist stump, curious in much the same way Thorne had been. 

Andry has a bizarre urge to hide his arm behind his back— as though he’s happy to strip down in front of an enemy soldier but squirms under his own brother’s eyes on his injury. He forces himself to stay still and let Asher look his fill.

“Can you still feel it?” Asher asks in a voice halfway between troubled and awed. “Guard-Captain Petry says that sometimes people can still feel bits that’ve been cut off. They still itch, and that.”

“Captain Petry says haggis comes from a whistling animal called ‘the wild haggis,’” Andry says lightly, hoping to earn a smile. “It doesn’t feel like anything.”

That is a lie of his own. While he feels no phantom of his missing hand, the iron of the manacle itself itches and burns against his skin, enough to wake him sweat-drenched from the few hours of sleep he’s snatched since everything ended, tumbling breathless out of a dream where he has stuck his arm into a wasp’s nest. The last of the House’s magic burning out of him, presumably. He tries not to think about it too much.

“Did they kill him too?” Asher asks him calmly.

Andry comes back to the present moment with a crash. “Kill who?” he croaks, his throat dry.

“Captain Petry.” Asher looks back up at Andry, his face serious. “He must’ve fought the soldiers when they came. Did they kill him?” 

Andry stares at Asher. The truth is, he’s been told Crane has closed most of the house guards in the holding pen underneath the barracks, in the hope that some of them will be willing to trade service for freedom. He has no idea how to say any of that to Asher. In a way it’s worse than knowing the guard captain is dead.

“You can tell me the truth, Andry,” Asher says. “I already know they killed Father.”

Andry just about swallows his tongue, and of course that is when someone knocks loudly on the door, and Thorne barges into the guest room with a redundant, “Knock knock, little Princes!” in a sing-song voice.

“Our hour isn’t up,” Andry snaps, and catches himself in just barely enough time to tack on a “sir” that sounds even halfway sincere. Thorne grins his sharp-toothed grin at him.

“Indeed not,” Thorne says, and he tosses two bundles of cloth at Andry and Asher. “You can use your last fifteen minutes to get changed!”

Andry misses his bundle. He has still not mastered how to compensate for his missing hand. He watches the cloth land on his lap, and doesn’t hear the next words Thorne says because he is thinking of the balcony, of bloody gold hair slipping through his fingers.

“–sence,” Thorne is saying with a wide smirk. “I’m escorting you there in half an hour, and you’re to be pristine and well-attired by then.”

“Both of us?” Asher says in alarm. Andry sits up very straight. “What kind of banquet?” Andry watches Thorne’s answer, heart thudding.

“It’s a welcome, to all the nobles who have pledged their fealty to the White King of Colomur,” Thorne says, apparently liking the way the words feel in his mouth. “There’s quite a few of them, you’ll find.”

Asher stares at him, almost hurt at the thought that the nobility of Craetalia would turn against the house of Fourshield so readily. Andry isn’t particularly surprised; half the nobles will be grateful for any change of leadership that might provide opportunities to secure favor with a new ruler; of those that remain, half resent his father’s bull-headed treatment of foreign nations and the other half don’t care who is King as long as he leaves them to bugger their servants in peace. That’s hardly the problem. Andry stands, holding the clothing he has been given in loose fists, and bows to Thorne respectfully.

“Please, sir,” he says towards the floor. “Asher has not spent much time among the Court. Surely he can add little to such an event beyond the risk of offence.”

Thorne leans in the doorway, looking at Andry with frank amusement. “I’m sure that’s true,” he says. “I imagine he’s there to keep you in line, Your Worship.”

Andry looks up at Thorne through his lashes without raising his head. “Have I stepped out of line thus far, my lord?” he says softly. 

Asher makes a very quiet noise of distress beside him. Andry tries to pretend he has not heard it.

Thorne laughs, shaking his head, and begins shutting the door. “No you haven’t, which is why I’m letting you change unsupervised. I’m escorting you both down in ten minutes, regardless of how dressed you are, so you’d better get started.”

Andry watches the door swing shut, and allows himself a moment to hate Thorne with his entire being. By the time he turns to Asher, his face is under better control. “Go on, we’d better change quickly. I’ll help you with the laces.”

Asher is staring at him, his eyes wide. Andry looks away quickly, and shakes out the garment he’s been given. He feels himself blanch, looking at the white silk.

“You can’t wear that,” Asher says in a stricken, horrified voice. “You can— you can bow your head to that murderer if you want to, but you can’t— “

“Don’t,” Andry says, and Asher pulls up short. Andry doesn’t see the look on his face, because he cannot look at him. “Don’t, Asher. I can’t— “ He closes his eyes, forces himself to breathe out. “I am going to keep you— us— alive. That is the choice I am going to make. If I cannot keep both my pride and our lives, I will give up my pride first.” He opens his eyes, breathes, makes himself look at Asher. Asher’s eyes are swimming with tears. “I am going to give it up because we will both die otherwise. Do you understand?”

Asher, so quietly Andry can barely hear the words, says, _“You shouldn’t have to.”_

Andry takes another breath, and begins to unlace his shift. “We don’t have any ‘shouldn’ts’ left,” he says.

\----

Really, Andry thinks, the tunic they have given him could be far worse. The collar is high and the hem sits below his hips; the sleeves flare at the ends but reach past his mismatched wrists. The shoulders are open to the frigid evening air, and it is trimmed all over with thread of gold. The leggings are plain black, and reach only down to the tops of his ankle, where they leave an inch of white skin above the gold slippers he has been given. If he looks like a whore, he at least looks like an expensive one.

Thorne re-enters Andry’s room after what feels like fewer time than promised, this time trailed by a man in the black-and-silver livery of an ordinary Leisevan soldier, who snaps smartly to attention, staring straight ahead. Thorne, on the other hand, takes a moment to survey Andry with evident appreciation; Andry tamps down his immediate discomfort— it is remarkable how very bare his shoulders feel when everything else is covered— and reminds himself that any eyes on him are eyes that are not on Asher, looking small and nervous beside him in a silver suit trimmed with black embroidery.

“Very nice,” Thorne says, grinning. “Just one finishing touch, courtesy of my Master.”

Thorne produces a jeweled box from behind his back and presents it to Andry like a name-day gift. Andry stares down at it blankly.

“Well go on,” Thorne says, giving the box a little shake. “Open it.”

Andry looks up at Thorne, for a moment allowing his doubt to show on his face, but when Thorne’s smile only widens Andry schools his features and lifts the ornate lid.

There is a medium-sized ring of beaten gold inside, open with a clasp at the back, and a loop on the front from which a long chain studded with gems in various colors trails in a long coil. It is so ostentatious that for a moment Andry genuinely cannot tell what it is.

Then his brain helpfully identifies it, and he balks.

“What?” Asher demands from beside him, looking between Andry and Thorne. Andry wants to quiet him but his hand is frozen on the box lid and he cannot look away. “What is it?”

“Hey, Private,” Thorne says to the guard behind him, without taking his eyes off Andry, “give the little guy an escort to the great hall, will you?”

The guard immediately steps forward, Asher leaps up from his seat on the bed, furiously. “What? No! I’m not leaving— “

“It’s fine, Asher,” Andry says. Years of practice leave his voice sounding— not very like his own, but clear and unemotional. He forces himself to turn his head and meet his brother’s eyes.

Asher is staring at him, his hands in fists at his sides. Andry nods his head, once. “It’s alright. I’ll see you in the Hall, Asher.”

Asher stares at him, protest clear on his face, but he lets the soldier plant a hand on his shoulder and steer him out of the room. Andry watches him go, and makes himself exhale.

“Thank you,” he says to Thorne, who is setting the box on bed, and looks up at him in surprise.

“For what?” Thorne says with a bewildered smile.

“For not doing this in front of Asher,” Andry says, and stands still to let Thorne fasten the collar around his throat.

——

After his initial second of white-faced refusal, the Summer Prince actually submits to the collar the same way he has to everything: with the solemn obedience of a true martyr. It’s—a bit disappointing.

Thorne has thus far had no luck in learning to read the Prince’s face, which seems to be blank more often than it isn’t. The reveal of the collar had honestly been the clearest expression he had seen so far, which had been exhilarating, and he had readied himself excitedly for the Prince’s refusal, which Morden had told him to anticipate; so he had about a dozen responses prepped for when His Highness finally asserted his Divine Right to etc. etc., and by the time he had led the Prince’s icy silence and downcast eyes to the double doors of the banquet hall he was feeling rather let down by the boy’s continued unimpeachable manners.

The Lion’s Herald tries to make apologetic eye-contact with the Prince when he is finished gaping at Thorne’s teeth and before he announces them, but the Prince studiously avoids his eyes, and the Herald turns away with a slight shake of his head and calls to the already-busy hall, “The Winter King’s Wolf, and— and Prince Andry.”

The Herald’s voice jumps octaves on the second half there, but that is driven immediately from Thorne’s head by the way the Prince’s entire body goes rigid at the announcement of Thorne’s title, and his eyes snap to Thorne’s in visible shock.

“Did know I had a title too, I see,” Thorne says, grinning; he hadn’t realized Andry didn’t know. “Can I take it from your gaping that you’ve heard of me?” The Prince’s reaction, while satisfying, is also holding up the line of arriving nobles; Thorne gives his lead a gentle tug and the Prince stumbles slightly, his face twitching.

The Prince straightens, lets himself be led, walks beside Thorne without looking at the jeweled leash in Thorne’s hand. “Forgive me,” he says, his voice sounding more forced than Thorne has heard it thus far. “I— hadn’t— realized.”

Thorne wants to question him, ask him what he’s heard, curious at the look on the Prince’s pretty scarred face, but they reach the high table too quickly. 

A grand spread has been set, the seats all along one side so that Morden, in the center, can look out on the tables arrayed around the floor. The Falconers are arrayed in the six seats to Morden’s right, with an empty seat at the end, beside Raven. Raven looks up, and smiles at Thorne. “Wolfie,” she says, raising her glass in a black-gloved hand. “What a pretty pet you’ve brought. Bring it to heel, won’t you? I’ve found the softest cushion for its knees.”

Thorne feels— the same hard-to-identify feeling he generally feels in Raven’s presence, half pleasure at her attention and half the desire to laugh and make his excuses. He’s surprised the Prince hasn’t reacted to her transparent baiting, until he glances at him and sees that his eyes are fixed on Asher, sitting in the seat beside Morden, who is leaning down to say something into his ear. As Thorne looks over, Morden looks up, sees Andry, and waves merrily, ruffling the little Prince’s hair.

Thorne gives the Prince’s leash a tug to bring his attention back, and this time the Prince jumps badly. Raven laughs merrily at him, and leans forward across the table, resting his chin on her hand so that her heavy black hair falls over the white table cloth, and bats her long-lashed eyes.

“You look lovely, little dog,” Raven says in a caressing voice. “Your seat is there. Be good and I’m sure Morden’s Wolf will slip you some scraps.”

She points over the edge of the table, where a cushion has been laid beside Thorne’s seat. 

Thorne settles into the high-backed chair left open for him, and looks at the Summer Prince, interested to see his reaction. To his— disappointment, the Summer Prince looks down at the pouf with utterly empty eyes, and gets carefully to his knees.

——

The room has been, as everything will be now that the castle is his, dressed exactly to Morden’s specification, and he is basking in it like a cat in a shaft of sunlight.

Morden hadn’t been sure, when he’d had the collar made, that he would ever actually use it; the Lion of Colomur was old, and while it doubtless would have had its intended effect, it would have been a waste of exquisite craftsmanship. It also might not have fit around his fat neck.

Morden had been annoyed at first, when Harpy had come to tell him that the Lion of Colomur was dead. He had suffered under the arrogance of those who believed themselves born to rule for more than long enough that fate owed him at least a few months of his own back on the very concept of hereditary leadership, and no one exemplified that more than the Lion; Morden had had his heart set on taking him apart.

He will have to apologize to Harpy. This is much better. 

The Noble he has been speaking to— from some nowhere holding in the far south, but quick to pledge his allegiance and thus seated closest to Morden— cuts off with a startled gurgle, almost choking on his dead King’s wine when the elder Prince enters with Morden’s Thorne holding his lead. Between them, the younger prince, who has been sitting completely still with his hands in his lap since the guard deposited him in the chair to Morden’s left, leaps suddenly to his feet with a horrified gasp, his silver clattering to the floor.

Morden takes a sip of wine. A little dry for his taste, but it does taste expensive.

“Do sit down, Asher, darling,” Morden says mildly, and the little Prince turns his eyes down to Morden, outraged. His eyes are less remarkable than his brother’s, a plain hazelish brown instead of that arresting blue-grey. Morden looks up at him. “It is Asher, isn’t it?”

Asher says nothing, positively trembling with rage.

“Asher,” Morden says, smiling. “Whatever is the matter?”

“You can’t do this,” Asher says very quietly, his voice shaking. “You can’t parade my brother around like some kind of— like a—” He is apparently too distraught to finish the sentence.

“Interesting theory,” Morden says, swirling his wine in its glass. The materials might be expensive, but Craetan craftsmanship is positively barbaric. “And who do you suppose will stop me?” He looks back up at the little Prince, who does not volunteer an answer. “Your father’s court, perhaps?” Morden raises his eyebrows at the Noble seated next to the Prince’s shoved-back chair. “Tell me, Lord Bowen. Do you object to how I treat those under my care?”

The Noble stares at Morden for a long moment, and then looks down at his full plate; he notably does not glance up at the little Prince. “No,” he says.

“No—?”

“No, Your Majesty,” the Noble says, and he treats Morden to a wobbly smile and a toast from a shaky hand.

Morden smiles beatifically up at Asher, who is looking down at the Noble in a mixture of shock and utter hatred. “Sit down, Darling,” Morden says. “I won’t ask you again.” 

Asher drops back down into the seat and stares down at the table, his hands in fists on the table cloth.

“Good boy,” Morden says, ruffling the boy’s unevenly-cropped hair. He makes sure to look up and make eye contact with the elder Prince when he does it, and is treated to the sight of Thorne giving the boy’s leash a firm tug; Morden shifts pleasantly in his seat. “And really, now,” Morden purrs down at the little Prince, “I don’t see what you’re so upset about.” Asher’s head jerks up to look at Morden furiously, and Morden smiles warmly at him. “He must have his hands free to eat, yet I can hardly have him wandering a palace full of soldiers; the— hardware— is simply a practical measure.”

Asher is breathing rather hard now, looking at Morden with an expression of absolute loathing.

“I— eh,” the Noble says awkwardly, around the food he has been shoveling into his face as an excuse not to make eye contact with anyone, “I do— wonder about the— outfit, your majesty.”

Morden raises an eyebrow, and the man busies himself with trying to fit all the food on his plate into his mouth at once. “It’s traditional Leisevan attire,” he says, straight-faced, knowing perfectly well that the Noble will not point out the room full of Leisevans with their entire torsos covered. “Besides, it’s rather fetching, don’t you think?”

The Noble pauses, glances over at the end of the table, looks back at Morden, and shrugs, smiling sheepishly.

The little Prince is staring down at the table, and big, silent tears are rolling down his plate and into his food.

Morden takes a slow sip of stolen wine. It’s sweeter than before.


	6. To Bid You All Welcome (Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact I started dissociating toward the end of this update Just A Little Before Andry Really Gets Into It which admittedly did help with the descriptions of Andry’s accompanying Vison Problems, so…… thanks I guess, brain???
> 
> TW for: public humiliation, dissociation, Boy In Situation Worthy Of Panic Berates Himself For Panicking, Vivid Wishful Murder Thoughts, Andry Fourshield Wishes He Were Dead.

This is the longest Andry has spent in the presence of Morden’s Falconers. He should be using the time to learn their names, learn who they are and begin to guess at what they want. But it seems that every time he raises his eyes he sees a face he knows, one he has seen seated at his father’s table in this Hall, and every time the dull buzzing in his ears gets louder, and it is becoming very hard to think.  
He is kneeling on the floor of his father’s Hall. There is a cushion under his knees; the embroidery suggests it was brought from the library, on the other side of the castle, which in turn suggests it was brought to the Hall specifically for this purpose. Which in turn suggests. That someone wandered through the castle deciding which would be the best cushion for when they made him kneel at the feet of the Winter King’s Wolf.

Andry closes his eyes. He’s been trying not to think of that part, because he doesn’t have time to berate himself for being an idiot right at the moment.  
When several of the nervous nobles arrayed throughout the Hall call for a toast, Andry has no way of knowing whether he has been on the floor for minutes or days. He doesn’t see Morden stop the servant who comes to pour his toast and beckon the girl down to whisper in her ear; from Andry’s perspective she materializes suddenly beside him at the end of the high table, dressed in Craetan livery and an apologetic expression.

“Your Highness,” the serving girl says in low, sorry voice, “The Whi— er.” She darts a nervous look at Thorne, who is eyeing her curiously. “That is, His Majesty requests. That you might pour the toast for the high table, sir.”

Andry looks up. The girl is on her feet and her servant’s uniform covers her shoulders, so it feels very strange to hear her call him “sir.” He doesn’t realize she is waiting for his response until he sees a drop of nervous sweat run down the side of her face.

“I,” he croaks. It feels as though it has been several days since he last spoke.

“Right, of course,” Thorne says immediately, leaping to his feet. Andry braces himself, but Thorne doesn’t yank on the leash like he expects, but pulls Andry upright with the quick, businesslike movements that seem to be his habit and clips the end of the jewelled leash to a small loop on Andry’s iron wrist-cover. Then Thorne takes the gold-rimmed wine jug from the girl and presses it into Andry’s hand. He looks very seriously at Andry, one eyebrow raised, and pointedly doesn’t release his grip until he’s sure Andry has a solid grip on it, his hand on the handle and his opposite arm supporting the bottom. It’s— a strange moment, as though Thorne would be responsible if Andry dropped the jug on both their feet.

Thorne waves a hand at the serving girl, and she bites her lip, looking at Andry. Andry forces himself back to the present exactly enough to shape his face into what he hopes is a serene and dignified expression, and nods at her, and she scurries off— though her lip is trembling, so he suspects he hasn’t got it entirely right. 

The jug is stately Craetan ceramic in deep blue and gold, and though Andry has drunk wine poured from it several times, he realizes as he walks mechanically over to Morden’s seat at the center of the table that he’s never actually touched it before. It’s smooth and rather heavy. Andry comes to a stop before the center of the high table, where Morden looks down at him from where he is seated in Andry’s father’s chair and raises his glass with a smile and a quirk of one sculpted black brow.

Andry vividly pictures what it would be like to bring the comforting Craetan weight of the wine jug down on the top of Morden’s head— of blood and wine clotting his carefully-maintained hair and staining the polished white of his face; the satisfying crunch of ceramic and skull shattering in unison. The Falconers are arrayed at their Master’s right hand and must have a dozen ways to kill Andry immediately afterwards, and wouldn’t that be the sweetest relief the Lady can give him?

Andry fills Morden’s glass. It’s awkward, he has to balance the bottom of the jug with his wrist-stump and the iron cover clicks unnaturally against it, but his hand is barely even shaking, and he doesn’t spill a drop.

While Andry pours wine into an array of glasses, he feels the eyes of the entire hall on him— on his cropped hair and bare shoulders— and the world narrows to a pinprick, blackening at the edges until he can see only fuzzy impressions of the jug, the hand holding the glass. He moves mechanically to Morden’s right— Morden will want him to serve his Falconers before the nobles on his left— and with all the willpower he has makes himself look into their faces. He has heard reports from soldiers, long before anyone believed the White Crane and his Falconers would dare bring their raids anywhere near Colomur, and Andry repeats the little information he has over and over in his head to leave less room for whatever is pulling at the edges of him.

Next to Morden is Raptor, the big man who held Andry down and cut his hair. His hand dwarfs the wineglass and his eyes are cold as flint. Next to him is one of two female Falconers, so she must be Harpy, who some of the soldiers call Hurricane in hushed voices. She is deep in boisterous with the next man down, the medic who first bound Andry’s wrist stump, and the hand that she is using to both hold her wine glass and gesture wildly is missing the last two fingers. The medic is called Heron, and he is eating from his own flatware and holds out his own black ceramic wine glass, because apparently he is afraid of poison. The next man is narrow and nervous and looks at Andry through narrow distrustful eyes, which presumably makes him Tern, the Scout; Tern’s suspicious earns him an eye roll from the man next to him, who must be Crow, the throatcutter, tall and proud and sneering down his nose at Andry. The woman on the end must be Raven, then, which means she is the one who cut off his hand.

Raven is probably thirty, very beautiful. Her lips and eyelids are painted black. She smiles at Andry, and then she jerks her wine glass to the side to avoid the stream of wine he is pouring, and a goblet-full of wine spills over onto the white table linen.

“Clumsy thing,” Raven purrs at him. “Now how are you going to clean that up?”

Andry stares down at the spilled wine, and in fact, he can barely see it. He sees movement and knows instinctively that the woman who took his hand is reaching now for his collar.

A handkerchief drops into the puddle as if from nowhere, and Raven, Andry’s leash already looped around her hand, makes a disappointed sound.

“Honestly,” Thorne says, soaking up the spill without looking at either Andry or the lady. “You’ve got no sense of subtlety at all.”

He sounds— uncomfortable. It’s nothing, at best useful, at worst a trap. It shouldn’t make Andry’s knees weak with gratitude.

I have to get better at this, Andry thinks desperately, and balances the wine jug more carefully on his ruined arm.


	7. A Single Bed; A Door With No Lock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andry assumes the worst. Thorne does not pick up on this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for: implicit threat of noncon, trauma-induced low self worth, dehumanizing language, Thorne's unbelievable level of denial.

By the time Morden has toasted each of the attending nobles into submission, and the Summer Prince has lapsed into staring straight ahead from his place kneeling beside the head table, Thorne is ready for the evening to be over.

He thinks briefly of handing the Prince’s leash to Raven, but rejects the idea with immediate visceral horror that is almost difficult to convince himself is the practical desire to avoid making a scene. The table is heavy, anyway, and also the Summer Prince literally has not moved for twenty minutes, so Thorne loops the end of the lead around the clawfoot table leg and doesn’t pull it tight. 

Thorne bows over Morden’s shoulder, and Morden, glowing in the mix of misery and praise radiating off the Craetan nobles, turns his head to smile up at Thorne beatifically and raises a hand— cold even in his silk gloves— to cup Thorne’s cheek.

“You’ve played your part very well, darling,” Morden says softly, and Thorne’s eyes slide shut, Morden’s praise shivering down his spine like cool water. It takes him a moment to remember why he approached.

“Thank you, Master,” Thorne says, his voice husky; he stops to clear his throat and remind his eyes how to open. “Master, will you allow me to take the Summer Prince to his quarters? I fear there’s no more fun left in him for tonight.” This is the absolute truth; there’s a possibility he’ll have to carry the Prince back to wherever he’s sleeping.

To Thorne’s knee-weakening relief, Morden’s black eyes light up. “Oh, yes— Thank you, darling, for reminding me.” Morden slides his hand up into Thorne’s hair, and Thorne lets himself be pulled forward slightly so Morden can speak his cool breath into Thorne’s ear. “I’m putting you up in the Gold Suite, darling. Tell the Prince that. He should know the way.”

That doesn’t mean very much to Thorne, but there is a reason for everything his Master does. Thorne bows, and for good measure rests his forehead gently against Morden’s shoulder, and is rewarded with a soft laugh and a gentle hand ruffling his hair. He has to force himself to move away from the gentle touch.

The Prince, as Thorne expected, has not moved by the time Thorne returns to him. Raven gives Thorne a baffled, annoyed look as he’s unwinding the Prince’s leash from the table leg, and Thorne looks down to see her prod the Prince’s thigh with the pointed toe of her slipper for what must not be the first time.

“Your pet is lucky to be pretty, at least,” Raven says waspishly. “I hope it makes up for his empty head.”

Thorne wrinkles his nose up at her. “Not responding to your pulling his pigtails, is he?” he says. “I wouldn’t call that a sign of an empty head.” Thorne crouches beside the Summer Prince’s cushion.

“Ugh. You’re going to waste all the fun just because you’ve always wanted a dog,” Raven says, turning back to her wine with a dismissive flip of her hand.

Thorne ignores her, because Raven cares more about hurting him then she does about truth or sense. “Alright, time for bed, Your Highness,” he says lightly.

The Summer Prince exhales, but makes no other sign that he’s heard Thorne. The Prince is kneeling, hunched over, his one hand loose and open in his lap; he looks like a puppet with its springs cut.

Thorne... is conscious of Raven watching him from the corner of her eye. It’s easy enough to imagine Raven pulling hard on the Prince’s leash, making him sorry for slipping away. 

Raven— has no sense of subtlety. That’s why Thorne doesn’t want to do that. He’s subtle.

“Oy. Your Worship,” Thorne says, and when the Prince’s eyes remain empty and dull, he reaches up and taps twice on the Prince’s bruised cheek, lightly.

The Prince comes visibly back to life, slowly, like a toy winding up. He looks at Thorne with over-reflective eyes, not entirely back in the room yet.

“...is...” the Prince mumbles— Thorne thinks; Craetan is not his first language— “...over...?”

“For you it is,” Thorne says, frowning. He doesn’t... the Prince’s blank face doesn’t. He thinks he should be feeling something different than he is. Morden would be feeling something different. “Come on. Get up.”

Andry blinks, twice, his breathing picking up to what sounds like a more normal rate. Then he looks at Thorne with mild alarm and scrabbles to push himself to his feet, supporting himself against the table. Raven scoffs audibly without looking at him; Thorne chooses to ignore her and he isn’t sure the Summer Prince even hears.

“Yes,” the Summer Prince says, “I— sorry, I— yes.” And he’s on his feet, leaning heavily against the table, looking down at Thorne in... clear expectation of punishment.

It’s. Possible he deserves it? For not staying present at the party and for hesitating to comply— except “hesitating” isn’t the right word. Still, probably Morden would punish him. Certainly Raven would. 

Well. Thorne is only watching the Prince for now; Morden will have plenty of time to punish him later. Thorne stands, and offers the Summer Prince his arm.

Andry blinks at it, and then up at Thorne’s face, startled; it’s the easiest-to-read expression Thorne has seen on his face so far. 

He is reaching out his mangled harm toward Thorne when Raven snorts and he starts like he’s been struck.

“Very romantic, Wolfie,” Raven says snidely. “Honestly. If you’re not going to play with him, get him out of here; you’re making me nauseous.”

“You always make me nauseous,” Thorne snaps, and earns himself a bright laugh that draws attention he doesn’t want. “Come on,” Thorne says to the Prince, and takes his arm anyway, because who cares what Raven thinks. The Prince leans against his side, and Thorne is surprised at his soft warmth.

In the hallway, Thorne is alone with the Prince again, and wonders if it feels like a weight off the Prince’s shoulders like it does off his. 

“Okay, Your Worship,” Thorne says, looking down at the top of the Prince’s head, where he is hunched forward, apparently out of breath. “We’re headed toward the Gold Suite. You know where that is?”

The Summer Prince’s shoots upright like he’s been struck by lightning, and he steps away from Thorne immediately, blue-grey eyes wide.

“What?” Thorne says. “Is that bad?”

The Prince stares at Thorne, as though trying to decide whether Thorne is fucking with him. Thorne shrugs, to show that he isn’t.

“I— yes,” The Summer Prince says finally, squaring his shoulders and slipping a finger under his collar like that will loosen it. “I know the way.”

——

They have put Thorne up in his father’s quarters.

It’s— in a way it makes perfect sense; in a way Andry should have expected it; in a bigger way it should not knock him off balance the way it does. Andry has spent very little time in the Golden Suite, and there are no warm memories there for the Winter King’s Wolf to pollute. He has spent more time in the Silver Suite, which was his mother’s before she began spending more than half her year at her family’s estate in the south, and knows that it is far more elegant and suited to what he has seen of Morden Crane’s aesthetic tastes. The furnishings of the Gold Suite are more expensive, but far less luxurious; Audoine the Lion never respected luxury.

There’s no reason leading Thorne the Winter King’s Wolf into his father’s rooms and watching the boy look around with surprised admiration should turn his stomach.

In truth, it doesn’t for long; the second he enters the suite itself all thoughts of his father are driven immediately from his head by a more immediate concern:

The room is large; it contains a couch and a large wash tub; and it contains only one bed, an imposing four-poster more than big enough for two.

Andry’s heart hammers rabbit-fast in his chest and he is trying and failing to force his face to stay blank and accepting when a small, blessedly Craet-accented voice pipes up behind him.

“Your Highness— Ah, that is, My Lord Wolf!” a serving girl squeaks from the doorway.

Thorne turns to look at her, and she quails under his gold gaze; she glances fearfully at Andry and seems to force herself to address only Thorne, bowing to him deeply.

“I apologize for bothering you!” Andry watches a drop of sweat make its way down the side of her face. “I only wished to— to inform you, that we have prepared sleeping quarters for His— For, for Prince Andry, in the adjoining room.”

Andry stares at the girl. She can’t be older than eighteen, and she is clearly terrified to be speaking to Thorne. Andry, anticipating Thorne’s laughing refusal of her rescue attempt, tries to catch her eye, so he can try to convey how grateful he is, and how useless her attempt at mercy is.

“Oh. Good,” says Thorne. Andry stares at him, startled. “Show me, will you?”

The serving girl lifts her head, and flicks another look at Andry, apparently almost as surprised by her luck as Andry is. “Y-yes! Yes sir! It’s through here!” She darts over to a plain wooden door behind the wash basin, and almost trips in her haste to reach it and pull it open.

“It’s... it is rather close, Your Highness,” she says quietly, to Andry, apparently as an apology.

It is, in fact, a closet, evidently intended for storing linens. A narrow bed has been dragged in and tucked against one wall; the door into the Suite opens at the foot of the bed. Another door, leading out into the hallway, is closed and locked. A single window is set high above the storage shelves, letting in a single crooked shaft of moonlight.

Thorne looks the room up and down sardonically. “Well,” he says. “Up to your standards, Summer— “

“Yes,” Andry says immediately, and wishes he could take it back; Thorne looks surprised and Andry half-expects him to rescind his offer of mercy. He bows to Thorne, deeply. “I thank you for your generosity, My Lord Wolf. It is more than enough for me. Thank you.”

“Uh,” Thorne says, sounding unsettled. “It’s— literally no problem, Highness. You’re very welcome for the gift of this tiny closet.”

Andry lifts his head enough to see Thorne give the serving girl a grin and a wink; she flushes in either pleasure or relief.

“Thanks, darlin’,” he says easily. “That’ll be all for now.”

“Yes my lord!” the girl squeaks. “Thank you, my lord!” and she scurries out of the room with one last apologetic look back at Andry.

Thorne huffs a single laugh, watching her run. “God, the serving girls all adore you, don’t they, Highness?”

Andry straightens. He has no idea why the servants keep looking at him with sympathy; certainly they should have no love for the Lion’s Heir, his father never met a servant’s eyes in all the years Andry knew him.

“I— have no explanation, Lord Wolf,” Andry says honestly, and Thorne looks at him in mild disbelief.

“No?” Thorne says, laughing again. “No idea why you might be a favorite of teenage girls? Your modesty continues to astonish.” Thorne finally stops looking at him, then, stretching his arms with a theatrical groan; Andry feels his shoulders loosen the second the Wolf’s yellow gaze is no longer on him. “God this has been a long fucking day, Worship,” the Wolf mutters ruefully, massaging the back of his neck; with no one watching but Andry, he slouches and immediately looks five years younger, Andry’s age again. “You may as well turn in for the night. I’m sure as hell going to.”

Andry nods eagerly, and is halfway through turning around when Thorne says, “Oh, hold on, I almost forgot.”

Andry freezes, squeezing his eyes shut; it is the end of the longest, worst day of his life; how has he been so stupid as to think it could end so easily?

“Here, turn around,” Thorne says, and Andry makes himself obey, feeling his exhausted muscles pull tight again all at once.

Thorne doesn’t even meet his eyes, he just raises his hands and undoes the clip at the back of Andry’s collar, and lifts it easily from Andry’s throat.

“Aright,” Thorne says, waving Andry away. “Get some sleep. Who knows how early he’ll want you up tomorrow.”

Andry stares at Thorne, the collar now dangling loosely in his hand like it’s nothing, like it’s jewelry; after however many hours Andry’s neck and shoulders feel light and alien without its terrible weight. 

When Andry doesn’t move, Thorne shrugs, and then turns his back on Andry and wanders off to Andry’s father’s bed.

Andry turns mechanically to close himself in his closet-room before anyone has a chance to change their mind.

There’s no lamp in the room— there’s no reason for there to be, and no place to set one, either— and closing the door plunges him into near-complete darkness, and Andry closes his eyes and lets himself sag forward, his forehead resting against the door.

This is— a reprieve, at best. And a full night alone is far from guaranteed. The door leading into Thorne’s new room has no lock; nothing is stopping the King’s Wolf from deciding he wants Andry after all and pulling him out of sleep at any hour. 

The Winter King’s Wolf.

Andry is— an idiot, for assuming Thorne was a servant. Thorne doesn’t wear armor like the soldiers or a cape like the Falconers, and Andry’s stupid addled brain hadn’t suggested any other position for him than, at most, Morden’s valet. Of course Thorne is the Winter King’s Wolf. On every level it makes sense— Andry knows the Winter King has a ward and apprentice; that the Wolf is rumored not to be completely human; and here is a man Crane speaks to with affection with pointed ears and yellow eyes. And of course Morden would— gift Andry to his Ward; the Wolf is Morden’s heir, and Andry is— has been— _was_ the Lion’s Heir; they are, if not equals, certainly mirrors. It is the perfect needle beneath the nails of the Court— here is my Ward, untitled except what I have given him; here he is leading your Prince on a leash and bending him over in his father’s quarters.

Andry flops back onto the bed, staring up at the dark ceiling. It changes nothing, ultimately, except to worsen his odds a little; he continues to have no recourse except to make himself so agreeable that Thorne hesitates to hurt him, trusts him enough to leave him alone somewhere with a window. There might have been hope of sympathy from a valet, hope of convincing him to look the other way or even help Andry escape. That hope is... diminished, to say the least, now that Thorne is Winter’s Wolf; the loyalties of a Ward are much more solid than those of a valet. But the plan— insofar as it can even be called that— is unchanged, if only because there are so few options to choose from.

Andry moves to cover his face with his hands, briefly forgetting that one of them is missing.

Andry would like to wail. It seems an appropriate time; he has not wailed for his father, or for Asher’s future or his own, or for his hand. But the Winter King’s Wolf is sleeping just beyond the door, and the door does not have a lock.

But there is, at least, a door, so Andry does allow himself to cry.


	8. Extra - Prompt: Stargazing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From comfort prompts on tumblr, but it fits neatly into continuity, so I'm adding it here too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for: implied/referenced domestic abuse.

Andry’s closet-room has two great strengths. One, it has a door, which may not lock but does close, something he thought he might never have again, and two, if he sits against the hall door and raises his head at exactly the right angle, he can just see the the Swan constellation through the high slit window.

Andry was almost ten when his mother moved her permanent residence from Colomur Castle to her father’s Rose Estate in the south. Andry has always thought the Rose Queen distant and insincere; she married Audoine as a twenty-three year old widow, because it was politically convenient both for Fourshield House and for her father the Rose Count, and when she had given the Lion both an Heir and a Spare and both boys seemed healthy enough to live to adulthood, she asked the Lion serenely for permission to return to her father’s estate, claiming that her delicate health needed the southern air.

Andry, seated beside his father’s throne, knew that his mother’s health was not particularly delicate and also knew that his father would agree, relieved if he felt any emotion at all. Andry himself rarely saw the Queen and was not particularly bothered until she added that of course she would take her daughter with her, and not burden the King with her care.

Hyacinth was the Queen’s daughter by her first husband, and Andry’s half-sister, and while it was true that his father seemed to think of her as a mild inconvenience when he thought of her at all, Andry loved Cinth more than enough for the rest of them.

Cinth was nine years Andry’s senior, and while she was as proud and perhaps as vain as her mother, she spoke to Andry in a way his mother never had… like no one did, really, like she thought he was funny, or embarrassing, or anything other than his Father’s eldest son. Cinth had stolen his toy soldiers and ridiculed his fashion decisions and wrapped reluctant but gentle arms around his shoulders when he shook with tears, and he didn’t know how he would live in his father’s house without her.

The night before she left with her mother, Cinth found Andry in Castle courtyard, perched under a tree and miserably tossing pebbles into the ornamental pond, watching them sink with barely a ripple, as he felt he would without his sister to speak and listen to him.

Cinth crouched beside him, for once wordless, and dropped a blanket around his shoulders.

“It’s winter, idiot,” she said gently, bumping her shoulder against his. “You’ll catch your death.”

Andry threw a bigger stone, which splashed freezing water at his feet. “Good,” he said passionately. “Then I shall not have to stay here alone with Father and the Terrible Spewer.” Asher was five at this stage and had not yet lived down an unfortunate encounter with an upset stomach and Andry’s best doublet. 

“Very Princely of you, to believe yourself alone in a Castle full of servants,” Cinth said snidely, and Andry looked away, shamefaced, and felt tears burning at the corner of his eyes. Cinth sighed.

“Look,” she said, and then flicked his nose. “Look, you baby.” She pointed above them, at the dark sky. Do you see that star above the tower that’s brighter than the others?”

Andry squinted. “Maybe?”

“That’s the Swan’s Beak. The four behind it are her belly and the three to either side are her wings.”

It didn’t look like a swan at all to Andry, but that did seem to be how constellations worked. “She?” he asked instead.

“Well of course, she’s me,” Cinth said smugly. “She’s beautiful, but her beak is sharp, and she always gets what she wants. Now listen.” She ruffled Andry’s hair–-he swiped at her; it was still waist-length and tangled easily–-and pointed at the “swan” Andry still didn’t really see with her other hand.

“Mother says we’ll come back for next winter Solstice,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically gentle. “So the next time you can see my sign up there, I’ll only be a week away. Will you remember?”

Andry looked up at the sky, and then at his half-sister, who gave him a rare smile.

“I suppose I will remember,” he said.

He did remember.

He waited for the swan to return all that year, and true to her word Cinth returned with the cold, every year for a week of mulled wine and Cinth’s growing determined politics, which manifested itself as increasingly sharp needling of Andry in public. He didn’t mind. In private she taught him chess, and watched his fencing matches if his opponent was handsome. And when she arrived to Andry’s fifteenth solstice to find him in bed on his stomach, his back heavily bandaged and his body burning with fever, he heard his mother begging her not to storm into his Father’s throne room and tear him apart. He dragged himself back to consciousness enough to tell her that her beak was not so sharp as that, and his mother laughed hysterically and called him delirious, but Cinth dropped to her knees beside his bed and said with her teeth bared that someday it would be.

The swan is back in the sky above Colomur now, which means the solstice is approaching. Cinth won’t come, and he’s had no word of her, but she is, thank god, the one member of what remains of his family for whom he does not fear. If anyone can turn the Winter King’s invasion to her advantage, it will be Hyacinth.

So Andry lets his head fall back against the door of his closet-room and watches the star until he falls asleep on the floor, remembering that at least one of the people he loves is away from here, and free.


	9. Extra - Prompt: Warm Bath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for a Comfort Prompt on tumblr, but it's good setup for the next chapter, so here we go.
> 
> Thorne draws Andry a bath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for: nonsexual nudity, captivity, referenced domestic abuse.

Andry falls asleep on the floor, sitting up against the door of his closet-room, which means he wakes in the morning with his heart quieted but his muscles so stiff he literally cannot move.

“Summer Prince,” Thorne is calling from his father’s room, voice mild and scratchy with sleep, though who knows for how long. “Rise and shine, Your Worship.”

Andry tries desperately to follow the order. Thorne has been easy to please so far, and he has no wish to break that streak. With a massive effort and burning pain in the muscles of his back, Andry struggles to his feet, leaning heavily against the wall.

“Are you alive in there?” Thorne says curiously, and then he pulls the door open just as Andry topples forward into his unused bed, his feet too numb to support him.

Andry stares up at Thorne, who is looking down at him like he is insane. There is a long, very awkward pause.

“Your Highness,” Thorne says slowly, “did you… sleep in that?”

Andry doesn’t know what Thorne means for a moment, and then he tries to snap to attention and only ends up falling back against the hall door, unable to form a proper bow. “I-– Apologize, Lord Wolf,” he stammers, looking down at the wrinkled mess of his Leisevan party clothes. They aren’t stained or torn, but they have very clearly been slept in. “I have–- It was not my intention to-–”

Thorne waves Andry’s panic away, laughing. “No, it’s fine, you just look hilarious. They really did a terrible job with your hair, Worship.”

Andry raises his hand to the shorn mess of his hair, the reminder sitting in his stomach like a block of ice. It does seem to be sticking up at several unique angles.

“Yes,” he says softly. “I–-apologize for that.”

Thorne’s amusement shifts into thoughtful appraisal. “It’s… fine… except I don’t know that I can actually present you to my Master like this.”

Andry tenses. Thorne jerks his chin back into the suite proper.

“Come on. I’m running you a bath.”

A full night's sleep actually makes it harder to undress in front of Thorne, not easier, though Thorne busies himself with going through his Father’s wardrobe with his customary mix of courtesy and callousness. Andry lowers himself into the washtub, trying to ignore Thorne’s scathing commentary on his dead father’s clothing options, and then the hot water hits the knotted muscles of his back, and he sighs out his held breath, nothing left in his head but the relief of the heat against his tense muscles and scar tissue.

Thorne’s huff of laughter brings him back. Winter’s Wolf is looking over at him, amused. “That good, huh?”

Andry lets his head flop back, willing momentarily to suspend his caution in the bliss of the warm water. “Unbelievable,” he breathes. “Thank you, Thorne.”

Thorne hums thoughtfully, and Andry looks at him from under his heavy lids, the relief so potent he almost can’t raise his head. Thorne raises an eyebrow.

“I wasn’t sure you remembered my name,” Thorne says, smirking. “You continue to impress, Your Worship.”

“There really isn’t any call for that,” Andry says, his voice loose and wispy. “I never used that title, even when I was a Prince.”

Thorne drops the tunic he’s holding–-solid blue and unadorned, like most of the Lion’s wardrobe. “You’ll always be a Prince, Your Worship.”

Andry lets his eyes slide closed, and huffs out a single breath of laughter. “Wonderful. It’s done me so much good thus far.”

“Huh,” Thorne says, and Andry cracks one eye open to see him leaning against the wardrobe, watching him with surprised amusement. Then he shakes his head as if to clear it. “On that note, I have a curiosity, Your Worship.” Andry raises his head obligingly to meet Thorne’s eyes. “Where did you get those scars?”

Andry sits up, looking down at his wrist stump as an excuse to break eye contact. The metal seems to do fine under the water, though it’s hotter than he’d like it to be; he’ll have to be careful to dry it completely, though. “Ask your master,” he says, more coldly than he means to.

“You know I don’t mean those,” Thorne says, moving to stand behind Andry; Andry feels himself tense. “How does a Prince get lash marks like that? We’re the first to breach the walls, aren’t we?”

“It sounds like you know exactly where I got them,” Andry says, looking down into the bathwater and trying to let the heat make him loose and drowsy again.

“I have no idea,” Thorne says, laughing, and his fingers brush very lightly against the base of Andry’s neck, just above where the mess of old scars starts on his back. “Come on, Your Worship, tell me what happened.”

Andry turns his head to meet Thorne’s startled gold eyes before he can think better of it. “Is that an _order,_ My Lord Wolf?” He growls, and then freezes, almost nose-to-nose with Thorne, immediately too panicked to take it back.

When Thorne straightens back up, laughing, Andry sags deeper into the water, relief and confusion unknotting his muscles again.

“Ha,” Thorne says, shaking his head at Andry. “If I’d known this was what it would take to grow your balls back, I’d have put you in hot water days ago.”

Andry half turns. Thorne is seated on the bed, looking at him with open amusement. “You… what?”

“I don’t mind telling you that you’ve been incalculably boring thus far, Your Worship,” Thorne says, kicking his legs against the side of the bed like a little boy. “There were times I wasn’t convinced you could talk.”

Andry stares at him. He feels a short stab of visceral anger–-Thorne wants him to talk back, to make jokes, so he can pretend they’re friends and Thorne isn’t helping Morden keep him like a pet.  
It’s–- It’s a good thing, Andry tells himself, turning back to stare down at his hands. More freedom to speak–-in private at least-–is good; he’ll last longer if he can speak to Thorne, at least a little. It makes the rules and boundaries less clear, and it could still be a trap, but–-

“I apologize for failing to amuse you,” he says, and lets himself sound–-slightly annoyed. Thorne laughs, so he must have threaded that needle correctly, at least.

“Here,” Thorne says, and tosses something in Andry’s direction; two-handed Andry might have caught it but as it is it clangs against the side of the tub and he has to lean halfway out into the cold air to pick it up. “Do something about your hair,” Thorne says.

It’s a bottle of scented oil. There’s no way Thorne found it in his father’s chambers. Andry wonders if the Winter King chose it for him, and shivers in the warm water.


	10. Sword of My Fathers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andry explains House Magic to Morden Crane, which comes with some unpleasant memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for: child abuse, whipping/flogging, gore, disproportionate retribution, mild possession, abuse of power.
> 
> Also please note: if you read this both here and on my tumblr at thewhumperinwhite.tumblr.com, you're not imagining it, they are very slightly different, but it should just be minor grammar edits. I have to put the italics in manually in both places so the tumblr version is like... draft two and this is draft three. Shouldn't be any major changes other than spelling and tense errors. Basically, if you want reasonably-spaced updates, follow me on tumblr; if you want anything resembling correct grammar, subscribe on here; I Can't Do Both At The Same Time.

When Morden Crane calls Andry to the King’s study on the morning of the fourth, it is the first time Andry has faced the Winter King with decent clothes and no blood in sight. 

When he enters the room, Morden Crane is standing at Andry’s Father’s desk, staring down at a sprawl of papers across the surface with a mixture of frustration and amusement. It is the least controlled Andry has seen him thus far, and it’s startling. The Winter King has clearly run his hands many times through his long dark hair and a few strands have fallen into his eyes. When he hears Andry’s footsteps stutter to a stop he looks up and laughs, shaking his head.

“Gakne’s Seven Legs, Prince,” he says, in Leisevan, and then in Craetan, “could the Lion of Colomur _read?”_

Morden wears a long red-gold braid tucked into one of his silver belt-loops. He cut it from Andry’s Father’s head with a borrowed knife. 

It is also true that Audoine the Lion had terrible handwriting.

“Not well or quickly, Your Majesty,” Andry says in a low, respectful voice. “His eyesight was damaged many years ago. And I’m not sure he had interest in books before then.”

Morden blinks at him, as though he hadn’t expected an answer. Then he laughs again, more brightly, the corners of his eyes crinkling. The Winter King is very handsome, almost beautiful, his skin ivory-white against his black hair and clothes; his black eyes glitter even in low light. 

“Sit down, little Prince,” he says, almost warmly, gesturing to the seat in front of Audoine’s desk. 

This was his father’s study. Andry has never— _sat down_ in it before. He sinks into the seat uncomfortably; it is several inches lower than Morden’s, so the Winter King can look down at Andry even when seated. It’s a powerplay so transparent as to be almost pathetic; Andry finds himself clinging to that: Morden cannot _not_ be tallest.

“Prince of Summer,” Morden says thoughtfully. He folds his hands in front of him on the desk and surveys Andry frankly, eyes lingering over his shorn hair and the still-healing scars and bruises on his face. “It’s a funny little title. How have you earned it?”

Andry has heard “Prince of Summer” from several of the Leisevan’s; it’s strange phrasing, too grandiose. “I haven’t,” he says, looking down at his lap— he’s been watching the servants for years and they never meet a Noble’s eyes; and his Father sometimes found eye contact provoking, too. “‘Summer Prince’ is the traditional title for the King’s eldest son.”

“Ah.” Morden rests his head on his hand and smirks at Andry. “As earned as any of the rest of your status, then.”

Is that... supposed to be an insult? _And as earned as your treatment of us,_ he doesn’t say. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Speaking of tradition.” Morden sits back up into his formal posture, fingers steepled on the desk. “I’m told you were the bearer of Fourshield’s Magic, little Prince.” He raises his eyebrows expectantly, and Andry nods, keeping his face blank. “I want you to tell me what that means.”

Andry blinks. “I— I’m sorry?”

Morden makes an inviting gesture with a black-gloved hand. “Assume I know nothing about magic. What does being the bearer of House Magic entail? Why did Fourshield House’s Patron choose you? How have you interacted with them thus far?”

“Why?” Andry says without thinking. 

Morden’s eyes crinkle further with pleasure as though that was exactly the answer he wanted, and he reaches forward with such a warm smile that it doesn’t even occur to Andry to move back until Morden’s gloved fingers brush very lightly over the place where Raptor’s gauntlet split his upper lip open.

There’s a sharp _pop_ as a current of electricity rockets out of Morden’s extended finger and into Andry’s face. Andry jerks back so hard his chair goes up on two legs, letting out a yelp like a kicked dog.

There are two Leisevan soldiers standing guard at the study door; Andry can just barely hear them laughing over the ringing in his ears.

“Because I’m the King, and I’ve asked you,” Morden says sweetly while Andry catches himself on the front of the desk, panting. The pain isn’t intense, but his muscles and heart feel hot and shaky.

“Y-yes,” he says quickly, trying to blink his eyes back into focus. “Yes sir, of course.”

He had— forgotten, because he can’t see Morden’s aura at all anymore. He looks down at the useless stump of his right wrist, with its iron cover marked with Morden’s rune.

“House Magic, darling,” Morden says, leaning back in his chair and grinning. “And do speak up.”

——

The way the patron of Fourshield House chose Andry was this: when he was fifteen, his father beat him to death, and She felt sorry for him.

Audoine the Lion had carried Fourshield’s magic since he was twenty, and almost never used it, thought it made him weak to have to rely on the Lady for what he could do with his own strength and sinew. 

It was the same pride, the same refusal to hand his power to anyone else, that made Audoine brandish the whip himself, and anger at the hushed voices that told him he need not do so, at the eyes of the People and the Court, made him swing harder than he needed to, made him keep swinging even when Andry was no longer screaming with every strike, was hanging limply against the post, held up only by his bound wrists.

For his part, Andry remembers the first ten blows as the worst pain of his life, and nothing after that. All the rest he has heard secondhand.

He is told that the Castle Healer ran to the post the second his Father’s arm was no longer rising and falling and pressed shaking hands against Andry’s throat— and felt nothing. That she waved at the guards to cut the ropes at Andry’s wrists— and that Audoine protested that he was not yet finished, and that was when light erupted from Audoine’s eyes and he fell to his knees in apparent agony.

Andry had some trouble finding someone who would tell him what happened next, even though it happened _to him._ In the end it was the Healer, even then an old woman and much older now, who closed the door of the room where she was changing the bandages holding his back together and told the story in a hushed voice without meeting his eyes.

Andry is told that the guards shrank back and did not untie the ropes; that they unraveled on their own. Then he is told that his own beaten corpse lurched to its feet as though on puppet strings, its back a mess of blood and torn flesh, and spun with uncanny, jerky movements to point a bloody finger at Audoine, and cried in a woman’s voice that shook the walls of the courtyard, _“AUDOINE!”_

Andry’s Father, still on his knees, is said to have frozen with his hands over his eyes, trembling from head to toe.

 _“YOU HAVE SPILLED YOUR OWN BLOOD, AUDOINE OF COLOMUR,”_ the woman’s voice thundered from Andry’s mouth, _“AND I AM TIRED OF YOU. I WILL GIVE YOUR HOUSE ONE CHANCE, AUDOINE. AND THEN YOU WILL BE ON YOUR OWN.”_

And then she let Andry drop like an empty sack, but the Healer found a pulse the second time she looked for one. And Andry awoke the next morning delirious with pain, which the Lady who Dances in the Dark apparently thought was as good an opportunity as any to introduce herself.

——

Andry does not tell Morden any of this.

“Our Patron chose me when I was fifteen,” he says instead, and clenches his remaining hand in his lap and does not think of the chance he wasted, and how it was the last they had. “She— declared Her favor, and I was given the Sword of Kings, through which the Lady manifests.”

“Yes,” Morden says speculatively. “I’m familiar with the idea. Each Patron uses a focus, and your Lady uses—” He stands and strides back to a table against the wall of the study. “—this hideous old thing.”

The sight of his Father’s sword hits Andry harder than he expects.

The blade is old, forged by Andry’s dozen-times-great grandfather out of bronze, which shouldn’t hold an edge nearly as well as steel, but the blade has only ever been sharp and deadly in Andry’s hand. In retrospect, it’s obvious that it must have been held together by magic more than metal by now. In the absence of the lady’s favor the blade is dull and pitted with rust. Andry feels a sudden heart-rending sympathy with it when Morden sets it on the desk between them.

“Here,” Morden says thoughtfully, studying Andry’s face as he looks at the blade. “Pick your sword up for me, Prince of Summer.”

Andry stares at Morden, startled. Morden gestures toward the sword invitingly. It’s true enough that Andry can’t do anything with it, with two guards on the door, even if it still held an edge. Still, now that it’s here, he desperately wants the feel of the handle in his hand, even if it isn’t the hand he used to use. Andry reaches for it.

The handle burns his fingers.

Andry hisses, drawing back, the leather wrap on the hilt smoking slightly. Morden laughs merrily.

“Brutal,” he says, grinning at Andry. “Your Lady surely is fickle, isn’t she, poor thing?” He watches Andry’s eyes, not bothering to hide his pleasure. “She really has rejected you completely, hasn’t she?”

Andry bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood, and sits quietly until the Winter King has finished laughing at him.


	11. Flashback: Little Bird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thorne comes to the Falconers at thirteen years old. It goes about as well as one might expect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **This chapter contains references to sexual abuse of a minor.** That isn't what's actually going on, but characters make light of it in inappropriate ways. This is Thorne Backstory, and it's the beginning of the explanation for Why Thorne Is The Way He Is, but if you don't wanna mess with depictions of bad things happening to kids, the two important facts are: Raven is a sadist, and she physically scarred Thorne when he was thirteen.
> 
> Other TWs for this chapter: knifeplay, violence against a minor, torture, dehumanizing language, drugging/poisoning, gaslighting. 
> 
> Oh also, we're in Villain POV again for this one, but a New Villain this time. Enjoy?

One of the things Raven likes best about Morden is that he is easy to understand. This puts him in a position of privilege; most people spend far too much time talking nonsense and purposefully not getting what they want, and she respects a man who not only admits to wanting things, but takes them. This is the main basis of their working relationship—that and the fact that he is the only man she’s ever met who is almost as beautiful as she is.

When Morden enters the front hall of the Falconer’s Nest with his black Falconer’s cape draped around the shoulders of a teenage boy, it is the first time she well and truly does not know what he is thinking.

The boy is somewhere between twelve and fifteen, clearly reeling in the aftermath of his first real growth-spurt, all knees and elbows, and he trails along after Morden like a clumsy puppy, watching the other Falconers with wide nervous eyes the color of molten gold. 

The eyes, and the baby fangs occasionally poking out over his bottom lip, mean he must have Fae blood in him somewhere; Raven has no idea where Morden could possibly have dug up a Fae survivor, but she supposes it explains some of Morden’s interest.

That first night, Morden tucks the boy up in a small room on the first floor of the Nest, away from the Falconers' rooms. Raven is waiting for Morden when he leaves the room, closing the door behind him but not locking it.

“Is this a fetish thing?” she asks mildly. She’s leaning against a support pillar in the common area, tossing one of her knives into the air so it spins a few times in the torchlight before she catches it. “I’ll be a little disappointed if you’ve thrown me over for someone whose voice hasn’t broken yet.”

Morden narrows his eyes into the semi-darkness of the common room, then sees her and laughs quietly, shaking his head.

“It’s not a fetish, Raven, no,” he says, coming to lean against the pillar across from Raven, mimicking her pose, smirking at her.

“You’re obsessive about Fae,” Raven points out. “And you’re needlessly private about your sexual habits.” She catches her knife by the blade so she can gesture the handle in Morden’s direction. “I said a _little_ disappointed, Magey. There’s no need to sneak around in your own lair.”

“And I never plan to,” Morden says, his smirk widening. “What is the Nest if not a place for us all to be ourselves?” He moves forward to flick her nose playfully. “Don’t worry, darling, he’ll not take your place in my heart.” Raven narrows her eyes at him, and he laughs and plucks her knife from her hand, laughing. “Not everything is about sex, Raven.”

Raven rolls her eyes and snatches her knife back. “Don’t play with toys you don’t know how to use,” she says. Morden starts to brush past her, and she grabs hold of his upper arm, hard. “I didn’t join your little club to be left out of the loop, Morden,” she growls.

Morden raises his eyebrows at her, and a current of energy runs up her arm from where she has hold of his bicep. Raven leaps backward with a yelp. Morden laughs at her again.

“You joined the Falconers in search of more opportunities to kill and maim, as I recall,” he tells her, ignoring her bared teeth. “This little side project will not stand in your way; you have my word of honor on that, Raven.”

And he sweeps off toward the stairs, leaving Raven to glare after him, rubbing her arm, which is numb to the shoulder.

It is not a particularly auspicious beginning to Raven’s relationship with Morden’s new “apprentice.”

——

In his third month of residence at the Falconer’s Nest, Raven spies the little wolf, whom Morden now calls Thorne despite Raven’s warnings that giving a dog a name is the first step to letting it sleep on the furniture, watching her during target practice in the training room. She sinks three knives in a line across the target dummy’s chest, and then turns to raise an eyebrow up to where he is crouched in the room’s rafters like an oversized silver housecat.

“Just when I am sure I have seen the very worst of your manners,” she says; he jumps so badly at being addressed that he has to scramble to keep his purchase on the ceiling beam. “Surely even you must know that it is rude to interrupt a lady at play, little wolf.”

Crow was the one who came up with that nickname, the first time the boy sat at the communal table with them. It was as though he’d never seen food before. Disgusting. They all use it now, because it’s a perfect fit: nothing more pathetic than a wolf who cannot even hunt.

The boy blinks down at her with his predator’s eyes, and then flushes and clambers down the support column he was sitting above, hiding half behind it when he’s at floor level.

“I— I wasn’t interrupting,” he says. His fangs are too big for his mouth, and he speaks with a slight lisp. “I was just— watching.”

Raven walks to the dummy to retrieve her knives, in case she wants to use them. “Watching a lady without her permission?” she says. “That’s a much more serious offense.”

Thorne flushes even more deeply. He is satisfyingly reactive, at least; one of them would probably have killed him by now if that wasn’t true. “Not— not like that!” he says quickly, holding up his hands in immediate surrender. “I was only— I thought—” He lowers his hands, looking away and shuffling his feet like a little boy. “I-I was wondering…” Now he looks up at her, under his lashes, one fang poking into his full bottom lip. “I was wondering if maybe… you could teach me?”

Raven stares at him. 

His flush deepens, improbably, but he pulls himself up to his full height, which is marginally more impressive than when he arrived clinging to Morden’s skirts three months ago. “I— I won’t be a burden. I can— I can help you practice, so you won’t be losing the time to teach me. I’m a fast learner, I can— I know I could be good, if you give me a chance.” Under his flush he is wearing a determined frown. 

Possibly he’s more aware of the Falconers’ disdain for him than he generally appears.

Raven feels a slow smile spreading across her face. “Really,” she says, looking Thorne up and down with more interest than she has thus far felt.

Of course Morden chooses that moment to enter the training room, the absolute spoilsport.

“Raven, have you— oh. There you are, Thorne.” Morden looks from Thorne to Raven, his eyes immediately narrowing— and landing on Raven, as though she were responsible for any of this. “I’m not  
interrupting, am I?” he says in a delicate voice with serrated edges.

“N-no, Master, of course not,” Thorne says desperately, and scurries off into the hallway, presumably toward whatever he was supposed to be doing instead of bothering her. Morden gives her a long look before he turns to follow. Raven rolls her eyes, and turns back to her practice.

——

“Raven,” Morden says that night. “Thorne says you offered to teach him to use your throwing knives. In fact, he says you were going to let him _help you practice.”_

Raven, interrupted in the act of giving her hair the hundred strokes it needs, sticks her tongue out at Morden’s reflection over her shoulder. “Your little wolf is a snitch,” she says, going back to her careful brushing. “And I didn’t ‘offer,’ it was his stupid idea.”

Morden narrows his eyes at her. “Raven. I have plans for Thorne. Plans which require him more intact than you leave your little ‘playmates.’ I will not allow you to set my research back because you are bored or jealous or whatever else your problem with him is.”

Raven spins on her stool to face him, slamming her brush down on the vanity hard enough to put a crack in the wood. “You won’t _allow_ me?” she snarls. “I wasn’t aware you’d been my _sainted mother_ all these years, Morden.”

Morden bares his teeth, deliberately letting his aura crackle through the air; Raven does not draw back from it, though it is a bit of an effort. “On the contrary, I am your _superior,”_ he says. “And I am _ordering you_ not to compromise my work with Thorne.”

“And what in seven hells makes you think I want to play with your clumsy little apprentice, Morden Crane?” Raven cries, indignant.

 _“You—_ Hah. You didn’t agree to train with him, did you?” Morden relaxes, his aura folding back in and his hair settling back around his shoulders; he runs a hand through it, laughing ruefully. “That idiot. I’ll have to remember that his inability to lie doesn’t protect him from the dangers of wishful thinking.” He sighs and waves a hand dismissively. “Never mind, then, Raven. You may return to your primping.” And he shuts himself back out of her room without so much as a half-apology.

Raven’s hand tightens so suddenly on her hairbrush that the polished handle cracks in half.

\----

Thorne, as far as Raven is concerned, has exactly two redeeming qualities: he is funny, and he is easy to find.

The sound of crashing equipment in the training room can only be the sound of an untrained dog; if any of the Falconers trained as loudly or clumsily as that, the others would fall upon them and eat them alive.

Raven gives herself five minutes before the fun starts to watch Thorne practicing his footwork, swearing at himself in a whisper every time the tip of his practice foil wavers, before she lets out any of the giggles building in her throat.

“I could fit a herd of ponies through the gaps in your stance, little wolf,” she says, when he’s spun wildly to face her laughter, dropping the foil with a clang. “Perhaps you should stick to making sparks with your fingers, or whatever else it is you do all day.”

Thorne flushes—again—and snaps to a clumsy attention. “R-Raven! I— that is— did you need the training room?”

“Don’t get your hopes up, Wolfie,” Raven says, sighing dramatically as she picks her way over to the equipment cupboard. “I’ve been forbidden to teach you anything.” She looks at him out of the corner of your eyes. “He says I play too rough.” The cupboard is beside a waist-high shelf, and she hops up to sit on it, resting her chin on her hand and her hand on her knee. “He doesn’t think you’re strong enough.”

Thorne absorbs those words like a blow, hunching in on himself, and Raven can actually see his little fangs sink into his bottom lip. Then he takes in a deep breath like he needs to reinflate himself. “I _am,”_ he says, trying for defiant and coming out desperate. “I— I am strong enough.” He balls up his hands into fists at the ends of his too-long arms, glaring down at the ground. “I know I can’t— I can’t lift heavy weapons and my footwork isn’t fast enough and I’m not picking up magic like Master thought I would, but— but I know I can do this if you teach me.” At the end there he looks up at her, gold eyes wide. 

Raven laughs once. “My knives are you last resort, eh? Here I was about to be flattered to be asked, but this just the last trick you haven’t tried, isn’t it?”

Thorne flushes and shakes his head quickly. “No, I— No! I actually really...” He looks away, red-faced. “I really... admire it,” he says, with quiet embarrassed sincerity. “I’d be really honored if you would teach me, L—Lady Raven.”

Raven watches him, holding back her smile, as he bows his head and waits for her answer. 

Perhaps the little wolf won’t be so bad to have around, after all.

“Oh, alright,” she says, hopping down from the shelf and pulling the equipment cupboard open. “Since you’ve begged so prettily.”

Thorne’s head darts up, his mouth open and his little fangs visible. “Really? You’ll teach me?”

“Spit spot, Wolfie, don’t make me change my mind,” she says, and he jumps to attention, like she knew he would. “Stand over there, will you,” she says, nodding to the far wall, “so we’ll know how far we are apart.”

Thorne scrambles to obey. Raven smiles broadly, rolling open the satin bag where she keeps her array of blades, from small and wicked to large and serrated. Raven hasn’t needed to train in years. Needless to say, she does not carry blunted blades.

“Now, little Wolf,” she says, flicking the tip of a blade unnecessarily with her finger, so he will know how sharp it is. “Watch my stance, won’t you?”

“Wh-what?” Thorne says; she gives him enough time for his yellow eyes to go very round. “W-wait. Wait, I—”

The knife buries itself in the wall beside Thorne’s head. There is an even three inches between Thorne’s cheek and where the handle juts from the wall, quivering.

Thorne turns his head to stare at it, wide-eyed. “R— Raven,” he says. “I— I don’t want—”

“Wolfie,” Raven says, and a second knife thunks into the softwood next to his moving arm. Then she relaxes out of her throwing posture and softens her voice, smiling at him. “Do you really think Morden would have me in his club if didn’t hit what I was aiming at?” He still looks poised to run, so she adds a sweet-voiced, “I won’t hurt you, little Wolf.”

Thorne looks at her with wide, guileless golden eyes, and stays where he is.

“Very good,” Raven says warmly. “This is your first lesson: choosing your materials.” She bends to pick up three small curved blades, shaped to sit comfortably between her fingers. “It depends on your mood, you see,” she says mildly, giving the tips each a little flick with her opposite finger. “Do I want time to play?” She flicks her wrist, and the blades thunk into a line directly above Thorne’s head, showering him in sawdust. “Or am I in a hurry?” The sixth blade is one of the large ones, like a miniature harpoon, and when Thorne sees it coming he makes a trapped-animal noise and drops to shield his face with his arms; the knife hits where the tip of his left pointed ear should have been, and Raven huffs.

“Honestly,” she says impatiently. “Jerk around like that and I really will hit you, Wolfie.”

Thorne straightens quickly, breathing hard but still embarrassed to have been caught flinching, and he still doesn’t run from her. Raven’s smile widens.

“Then, of course,” she says, her voice still light and casual, “there are blades for special occasions.”

Raven throws the seventh blade exactly like the sixth, straight armed, shooting from the shoulder, and this time Thorne doesn’t move.

His scream when it sinks into his shoulder is fuller than she expects, not a tinny child-scream, and she immediately knows she needs to hear another.

“Like that one,” she says, watching Thorne fall to his knees, clutching his shoulder, his mouth open, not in anger but in surprised offended _hurt._

“You— you hit me!” he says, clutching at the blade but making no attempt to pull it out. “You said— you said you wouldn’t—”

“Yes, Wolfie, sometimes grown-ups lie,” she says on her way over to him. “Let’s call that your _real_ first lesson.”

It’s really in there quite deep. She plants her foot on his collarbone for enough leverage to pull it out, and he screams again, just like she hoped he would.

“If you were hoping for a bonding experience, it’s really going better than I thought it would, Wolfie,” she says, holding the blade up so the blood catches the torchlight. She’d been hoping it would be some funny color, since he isn’t human, but it’s only normal red. Now that she’s actually having fun, her voice grows warm for real. “You really scream very prettily.”

Thorne gasps, clutching at his shoulder, and scrambles to his feet; he stumbles into her to push her away and she lets him, surprised.

“You— you meant to do that,” he says, apparently realizing it in real time; Raven can’t help shaking her head and smiling at him. “I’m—” He backs toward the door. “I’ll— tell my master—”

When he turns away, she says, “I thought you said you were _strong,_ little wolf,” and he grinds to a stop, staggering— and then he crumples to the floor with a surprised gasp.

 _“There_ it is,” Raven says. “Your faery blood must be good for something, I’ve never seen it take that long.”

“I’m,” she hears him say, his voice rising in panic, “I can’t— why can’t I—” She ignores him for long enough to pull each of her throwing knives out of the wall before she saunters over. He’s lying in an unnatural position, half on his side and half on his belly, like a doll dropped by a careless child. Raven nudges him in the side with the toe of her shoe. “You— what did you—”

“Well obviously I’ve given you poison,” she says impatiently. _“Gods_ you’re stupid. It’s fucking exhausting.” Raven squats next to Thorne, balancing carefully on her heels, and turns his face toward her a bit, squeezing his pointed chin between her thumb and forefinger. “I hope Morden gets tired of you soon. I’m tired of having a wolf in our nest.”

To Raven’s genuine surprise, Thorne has exactly the strength left to dart his chin down and sink his sharpened teeth into her hand.

 _“Fuck!”_ She draws back. “Fucking horrible little _beast—”_

 _“Don’t call me that!”_ Thorne cries, tearfully, and Raven stops the hand she had been raising to strike him with.

“That’s right,” she says slowly, tipping her head to look with curiosity at his wet eyes and shame-reddened cheeks. “You don’t like that, do you? You don’t _want_ to be a wolf.” Then she laughs, delighted; it’s a brilliant little joke. “God, you wish he’d given you a _bird_ name, don’t you? You want to be part of the team! You want to be a _Falconer!”_ Raven leans down, resting her chin on her fist and meeting Thorne’s furious yellow eyes. “Well, you’re not a bird, are you, poor little thing? And you’re not a wolf, either. You’re not even a dog. You’re just a scared little boy with nowhere to go, and no one who misses him.” She shakes her head, though she can’t quite keep a straight face. “It’s very sad, really.” Then she sits up, excited. “Perhaps I should help you!” she says, and she grabs a fistful of Thorne’s silver hair to drop him more fully onto his stomach. “If you want so badly to be a bird, you need a set of wings!”

Thorne flails slightly— it’s more than he should be able to, but not nearly enough to worry about; Raven swings a leg over him and sits on his knees.

 _“No,”_ Thorne whispers, his voice muffled by the dirt floor of the training room. “N-n-n— you, you _can’t—”_

Raven taps the hilt of her knife thoughtfully against her chin. “Now, I should think. What haven’t we used? They all have different kinds of wings, you know.” Before she decides, Raven picks a different, larger blade, and splits the back seam of Thorne’s shirt easily down to the waist, pulling it open to expose his shoulder blades. She wouldn’t mind leaving it, but Morden really will be angry if she lets him get an infection from cloth in a wound, probably. Thorne makes a very satisfying sound when she tears the fabric, a high petrified whine in the back of his throat. " _I_ know,” she says with immense satisfaction. “You’re a _swallow,_ aren’t you? Let’s see.” She braces one hand against the back of his head, pressing the side of his face into the dust. “Here’s _one_ wing—” She sank just the tip of the tiny blade into the skin between his shoulder blades, and drew a great swooping curve over and down toward his waist. Thorne’s whine rises into a high keening cry and Raven feels a swell of genuine affection for him. “And here’s the _other_ w—”

_“RAVEN.”_

The tip of Raven’s blade is halfway down Thorne’s shoulder blade when the wave of magic sends her flying sideways into the wall, and it tears a line out to his arm before it clatters to the floor.

Morden enters the room with wings of his own, hovering huge over his shoulders as twin clouds of foggy mist shot through with sparks. He drops immediately to his knees beside Thorne, gathering the boy’s limp form into his arms, taking care to avoid his bloody back and making soft soothing noises. When he’s gathered the boy carefully in, Thorne’s face hidden against his chest, he looks over at Raven over the top of Thorne’s head and gives her an annoyed pout. 

Raven is struggling back up to her feet against the wall, still; Morden’s magic really knocked the wind out of her, but she raises her head enough to drop him an exaggerated wink.

——

The crackle of magic at his back, searing against the cuts, then bandages. Grimly, “It will scar. Perhaps next time you will remember—”

“You really must—”

“—is very dangerous. Promise me you won’t antagonize—”

“—exactly did you expect? My Falconers are not a—”

Softening. A cold hand cupping his cheek.

“No, darling, of course I could never get tired of _you.”_

——

Raven is on stroke eighty-seven when she sees Morden appear over her reflection’s shoulder, her hair shining, and she doesn’t pause, smiling at herself in the mirror.

“And?” she says, a touch smug.

Morden narrows his eyes at her, then rolls his eyes and gestures dismissively with a gloved hand. “All right, all right,” he says. “It was a good idea.”

“Happy to be of service, _boss,”_ Raven says, running the brush through her hair. Ninety-three, now. Almost done.

“Yes, yes, don’t be so insufferable,” Morden says ruefully, shaking his head. “And Raven?”

Raven sets the brush down, turns to look at him, meeting his black eyes.

“Next time, ask first,” Morden says.


	12. Stained Glass, Candles, Empty Stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andry attempts to pray. Thorne avoids a flashback purely by turning his brain off. Raven says hello.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short update this time because I'm kind of going through it.
> 
> TW for: implied/threatened noncon, noncon touching, noncon sexualization, captivity, (fantasy) religious themes, mild dehumanization, panic/dissociation, burns.

On the fourth day of his captivity, Andry asks Thorne for permission to visit the chapel in the south wing of the castle, and Thorne squints at him, searching for ulterior motives, and then agrees, on the condition that he will escort Andry to the very door and watch him while he prays.

Andry agrees easily, because he does not actually _have_ any ulterior motives. None that are concrete enough for Thorne to worry about, anyway. Thus far he’s actually not sure he’s said a single thing to Thorne that isn’t true.

The day before, Morden ended their interview by presenting Andry with what he described smilingly as a “simple gift:” a plain leather collar, clipped to a four-foot leather lead. He paused after presenting it, clearly waiting for Andry to thank him, and it was easier than Andry would have anticipated. He greatly prefers this collar to the golden bejeweled one, which is apparently reserved for public appearances. 

The leather collar is clearly meant to remind him— and everyone who sees him— of a dog’s collar and lead. The gold collar is clearly designed specifically to make him look like a whore. Though two weeks ago he might not have thought that was a difference that mattered, he now knows for certain that it is.

Morden also, for reasons entirely his own, leaves the actual application of the collar to Thorne, as before, and although he worries he will become too comfortable with Thorne’s hands around his throat, ultimately he has to admit he is grateful for that too. Thorne is not particularly sympathetic when he buckles on the collar, but he doesn’t visibly enjoy it, either, it seems to simply be his job. And, whether at Morden’s suggestion or using his own judgement, he has thus far allowed Andry to remove the collar before he retires to his closet room at night.

He’s sure to buckle it on before he lets Andry lead him through the hallways, loops the end of the leash around one of his wrists and then uses that hand to gesture with while he criticizes the castle décor. The lead is long enough that he doesn’t pull on it, and in fact Andry isn’t sure Thorne even fully remembers it’s there.

Like many other things about Thorne, it’s possible this should endear him, but in fact it makes him angry, though Andry has more than enough practice to keep that anger simmering far under his skin, so deep he’s barely even aware of it.

At the actual door of the chapel, Thorne loses his nerve. The room is tiny, smaller than Andry’s closet, with only a rug to kneel on, a few dozen candles, and a weathered, smaller-than-life statue of the House’s Patron, the Lady who Dances in the Dark.

Apparently leaning directly over Andry’s shoulder while he kneels is too intimate for Thorne, because he makes a half-hearted crack about the chapel being “more like a Prayer Closet,” and then he stiffly hands Andry the end of his own leash and shuts the door in his face, leaving him with only the slanting sunlight from a high, narrow window, colored rosy and dim by stained glass, and the circle of half-melted candles around the prayer rug. 

Andry meets the statue’s eyes, purely by accident. It isn’t an impressive likeness, but— but it looks enough like Her that it must have been carved by a past bearer of her magic, or at least someone who spoke directly to one.

Andry lowers himself carefully to his knees, and then, for good measure, lowers his forehead to the base of the statue. The stone is very cold, and utterly devoid of magic. He breathes out, long and slow, and closes his eyes.

“I don’t expect you can hear me,” he says softly, to the base of the statue. “But if you will hear me anywhere, perhaps it is here. Lady.” He raises his head, enough to look back up at the statue’s face. It must be a second hand description after all, or they would have carved her grinning. _“Karya._ I know you—I know you have given my line enough chances, and I have no right to ask for more. But—”

The statue looks at him serenely. He cannot even picture that look on the Lady’s face. He sits up, smiling at it bitterly.

“You’re not here, are you,” he says. He runs a hand through his cropped hair. Laughs once, at himself. “Forgive me,” he says to the statue, which is nothing but stone. “Someday, I swear, I will learn to take a hint.”

The silence in the chapel is so deafening that he is almost glad when the door opens, though if he were actually any good at praying it would be a laughably short time to allow him. He turns to the door, smoothing his face back out. “Thank you for indulging—” He stops.

It isn’t Thorne standing in the doorway. It’s the lady Falconer, Raven.

Andry stares at her, too surprised to decide what facial expression is appropriate. Raven grins at him.

“Hullo,” she says. “I’ve come to give you a break from the wolf puppy’s endless yapping. I’m sure it’s desperately needed.” She hooks a thumb over her shoulder. “Come on, Princey, let’s go find something fun to do, eh?”

Andry blinks up at her. It’s an utterly transparent trap, though Andry can’t entirely guess the purpose of it. He stays where he is— he’s a smaller target on his knees, and marginally more difficult to get ahold of while surrounded by lit candles.

“Actually,” he says, trying to sound humble instead of suspicious. “I think perhaps I had better wait for the Lord Wolf.”

Raven looks down at him, and tilts her head with a speculative little hum. She smiles again, almost friendly. “You know, if you’re choosing what horse to back, Wolfie is definitely not the right one. He is exactly stupid enough to be useless, and exactly smart enough never to stick his neck out for you.” She leans forward, her long hair hovering over several candles, swinging through the smoke like a curtain. “Trust me. I speak from seven years of listening to him bark.”

Andry— doesn’t know what to say to that. “Forgive me, my lady,” he says. A minute ago he was comforted by the closeness of the room; now he is very aware that with her standing in the doorway there is nowhere for him to go. “What is it you want, exactly.”

“Hmm,” Raven says, as though pleased to be asked. “That’s an interesting question. I’m not sure I have yet decided.” She steps carefully between two of the candles, mindful of her skirts, and then her hand shoots out very suddenly and grabs hold of Andry’s leash, just below the collar, and she pulls hard, drawing his face close to hers.

“Though I’m sure I can think of something,” she says into his ear. 

Andry— can’t see right. This is— he’s not ready, he thought he would have more time to— 

There is an abrupt, searing pain in his good hand, and Andry almost screams before Raven leans in to yank backward on his collar and cuts it off with a gurgle.

“Alright, apparently Master did _not_ send for me, so I— _Raven.”_

Raven is back on her feet before Thorne has finished the second syllable, somehow managing to move rabbit-fast without ever looking panicked. One of the candles at Andry’s side is out because she snuffed it against Andry’s bare hand.

 _“There_ you are, Wolfie, we were beginning to worry,” she says sweetly.

“Where is the guard I set on this door?” Thorne says. The doorway is narrow and Andry can’t see him; his voice is hard to read.

“I told him to go get some lunch,” Raven says, unrepentant. She steps easily back from the doorway, lets Thorne look in at Andry. Thorne looks toward Andry, but doesn’t meet his eyes. 

“I think you’ve prayed enough,” he says over the top of Andry’s head. “I’m taking you back now.” And he offers a hand to help him to his feet.

 _Smart enough never to stick out his neck for you,_ Andry thinks, and drops his burned hand to his side, gets to his feet without Thorne’s help.

When he emerges into the hallway, Raven waggles her fingers at him. “We’ll talk later, Princey,” she says.

Thorne does not meet his eyes once on the walk back to their quarters. Andry’s leash hangs slack between them; Thorne neither pulls it tight nor lets it drop.


	13. Magic Lessons, Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for: power imbalance, past child abuse, captivity.
> 
> Baby short chapter this time cause I'm having.... wildly increased brain problems? Part 2 coming soon hopefully.

“Darling,” Morden says. He is still smiling, but he is almost always smiling and Thorne has to avoid taking a step back from this particular smile. He looks only gently amused, but Morden’s amusement is often dangerous enough. “Are you _questioning_ me?”

“No, Master,” Thorne says immediately, snapping to attention. “You know best, of course.” He tries to will himself to shut up, but he can’t quite manage it. “I only meant that—that I know I could be more useful to you, Master!”

“Mm- _hmm,”_ Morden says. He rests his elbow on his great mahogany desk, and rests his pointed chin on his hand. He’s still smiling, looking fondly exasperated; it makes Thorne shiver, though he can’t entirely tell what kind of shiver it is. “Darling,” Morden says again, “Thorne.” Thorne feels cold sweat begin to collect under his shirt collar; Morden gave Thorne his name, but whenever his Master actually uses it means his patience is wearing thin. “Have you been practicing?”

Thorne’s face goes hot immediately. “I,” he says, “I, yes, of course, Master, of course I have.”

Morden’s smile widens, and he begins to strip off his black leather gloves. “Good. Because I believe it’s past time for a Magic Lesson.”

That makes Thorne go cold instead, but with a little effort, he succeeds in making himself nod, and hold still.

——

It was easy to keep track of time during the siege itself, when every hour wore both their supplies and his father’s patience a bit thinner. Now that it’s all over, Andry has no reliable way of knowing what day it is, or how many days the castle has been occupied. If he had to guess, he’d say less than a week, but it _would_ be a guess.

Presumably Morden Crane is still settling in and deciding which of the occupants of the castle he wants to murder, because he hasn’t sent for Andry since parading him in front of his father’s court at the welcome ball. He also doesn’t seem to have sent for Thorne in that time, either; and while Andry is obviously grateful for the reprieve—though it does make it more difficult to avoid settling into dangerous complacency—Thorne is almost literally climbing the walls. Occasionally he wanders off to amuse himself, generally leaving Andry locked in his father’s—in _Thorne’s_ bedroom, which is… hardly something to complain about, given that the alternative is being dragged around after Thorne by his throat, but. His father didn’t even keep _books_ in here. So all there is to do is… stare at the walls and count the tassels on the bed curtains and, if he wants, pace.

Which is fine, except that it means he’s starting to be more and more grateful when Thorne arrives back from whatever it is he does all day, and that is not a state Andry is interested in getting into.

In the spirit of not becoming overly grateful for Thorne’s presence, therefore, Andry does not get up from where he’s sitting on the floor when the door opens, until he sees that Thorne is stumbling so hard he almost misses the bed, collapsing onto it face-first with a grown. Then Andry gets to his feet and takes a step closer almost without thinking, if only because it has been days since he’s had anything so concrete to be curious about.

He realizes what he’s doing and stops at approximately the same moment that Thorne raises his head to look at Andry, bleary-eyed, and then raises his hand and points it at Andry, squinting with apparent effort.

Andry moves back immediately, but nothing happens except a sudden bloom of heat in the metal covering his wrist-stump, startling but not painful at all. Thorne drops his hand, and then drops his face back against the coverlet, punches the bedclothes and lets out a muffled growl.

Andry, frozen with his hands up to shield his face, stares at him. He is—genuinely not sure whether this is a time to reach out in the hopes of making Thorne like him, or whether this is a time to very quietly retreat to his closet and hope Thorne forgets he is here.

Before he’s come to a decision, Thorne lifts himself half-way up onto his elbows so he can glare at Andry. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a week, even though Andry has seen him do so, and knows he did not look this exhausted an hour ago.

“You,” Thorne barks, and Andry has to stop himself from wincing. “You’re magic, aren’t you?”

Andry blinks. He lowers his hands, turning that question over in his head a few times to see if it will start making sense. It doesn’t, particularly. “I’m sorry, my lord Wolf,” he says finally. “I’m not sure I—”

“You used to do magic, didn’t you?” Thorne says impatiently. He’s half-sprawled on the bed, looking up at Andry with a foot of bedding and perhaps three feet of empty space between them, and he is clearly annoyed but Andry does not know why, which is making him very uneasy. “I don’t understand your Craetan household-gods thing, but you _were magic,_ weren’t you?”

Andry wonders what Karya would think if she ever heard herself called a “household god,” if she’d be pleased by the “god” half or insulted by the “household” one. “I— suppose you could say that, my lord,” he says slowly.

Thorne narrows his eyes, and Andry wonders with slight increase in his pulse if that was the wrong answer. “How did you learn,” Thorne says, his voice still sharp.

“I’m sorry?”

“How did you learn magic?” Thorne snaps, pushing himself up into an actual sitting position on the bed, his hands making fists on the silk bedspread. “I’ve heard only that you ‘bore the house magic,’ but I don’t know what the fuck that means.”

“I… didn’t learn,” Andry says, still feeling as though he is trying to pick his way across a dark room without a torch. “I was… chosen, and then I… had magic.” 

He’s about to add that he was never capable of… “doing” magic, as Morden apparently is, and that a month ago he was fairly confident that wasn’t how magic worked at all, but before he can go on Thorne’s face twists into a scowl and he grabs on of the overstuffed pillows from the head of the bed and lobs it at Andry’s face with a growl of, “Lucky shithead.”

And Andry sees him do it, consciously he sees the whole process of Thorne curling his lip and reaching for the pillow and throwing it, but a large part of his brain apparently registers only that Thorne has moved quickly and now something is flying at Andry’s face, and he moves so desperately to get out of the way that he slips on the edge of the carpet and falls, lands hard on his ass with an embarrassing little gasp.

Thorne blinks, and then laughs, flopping back on the bed so that Andry can only see his slippered feet. “Alright, not _that_ lucky,” Thorne concedes.

(Once when Andry was thirteen he was leaving an argument with his father, and Auidoine picked up a ceramic lion figurine from the mantle in the formal sitting room and threw it at the back of Andry’s head so hard that Andry could not stand bright light for a week, or hear clearly for two months longer than that. His left ear still rings in quiet rooms like the one Thorne keeps leaving him in. But of course his father is dead and it will do him no good to think of any of that now.)

“Sorry,” Thorne says after a moment, and Andry is glad he is still lying back on the bed, so that he cannot see the look Andry gives him in response. “I suppose it’s no fault of yours if I’m a disappointment to everyone in all things.”

Andry— has no idea what to say to that. Thorne isn’t an idiot; surely any reassurances coming from Andry, who doesn’t know him and is also explicitly under his power, would sound insultingly disingenuous. Yet it sounds like an obvious bid for reassurance.

Or possibly he wants to vent his spleen about it and Andry is a convenient excuse, like a dog, or a particularly friendly-looking pot-plant. In service of this, Andry tries, “Disappointment, my lord?”

Thorne heaves a long sigh. Then he covers his face with his arm and waves vaguely in Andry’s direction. “I’m too tired to babysit you just now, Your Worship,” he says. “Supervise yourself and leave me to be a failure in peace, if you please.”

Andry frowns. Thorne, stretched out on Andry’s father’s bed with one arm slung dramatically over his face and his other flopped open-palmed beside him on the coverlet, looks more than tired; he looks washed out and bloodless under his dark complexion, almost gray-tinted.

“My lord,” Andry says slowly, knowing it’s a gamble, “Is there anything I can—do for you?”

 _“Ugh,”_ Thorne moans. “You can stop _looking at me,_ for a start.”

Andry closes his eyes and sighs. Then he bows his head as respectfully as he can, and turns on his heel, because apparently Thorne would like him to sit in a closet in the dark for a few hours.

Again.


	14. Magic Lessons (Interlude)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thorne is manic with frustration after his apparently-unsuccessful "magic lesson" with Morden. He enlists Andry's help relieving the tension.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for: unhealthy power dynamics, captivity, use of collar and leash.

Andry’s eyes have well and truly adjusted to the dark of his closet-room when the door is suddenly yanked open and Andry jerks upright on the narrow bed, squinting in the bright light.

Thorne blinks down at him owlishly, his silver hair a tousled mess. Thus far Andry has only seen it neatly arranged; apparently Thorne waits to summon him until he has finished primping on normal mornings.

“Have you been sitting in here in the dark?” Thorne says blankly. 

It has occasionally occurred to Andry that perhaps Thorne is not so much cruel as very, very stupid. There’s no logical reason this should annoy him more than Morden’s calculated brutality. And yet.

“You wished to be left alone,” Andry reminds him as gently as possible. 

For a moment Thorne seems to have no idea what Andry is talking about, and then he runs a hand through his hair, making it stand even more on end than before, and colors slightly in apparent embarrassment.

“Right,” he says. “I suppose I didn’t fully… well, whatever.” He moves back out of the doorway to allow Andry room to emerge from the closet; Andry climbs hesitantly to his feet. “Here,” Thorne says, and tosses something to Andry; it smacks lightly into his stomach, so it doesn’t trip memories that make him flinch, but he has to scramble to catch it with only one hand, as always. “Put that on. You’re coming on a little expedition with me.”

Andry stares down at the small tangle of leather and silver in his hand, and finally it resolves itself into something familiar: it’s his “casual” collar. Andry holds it up. Thorne stomps over to the small vanity beside the bed—Andry wonders where it was dragged in from; his father allowed no mirrors in his chambers after the Lady burned out his eyes—and grabs hold of a small silver brush, drags it through his hair with short, brutal strokes. Andry finds himself watching, the collar dangling from his single hand; when he had enough hair to be worth brushing, he would never have been able to treat it so roughly, he feels his mother would project herself into the room from half a country away to knock the brush from his hand.

Thorne turns, dropping the brush with a louder clatter than needed, and stares at Andry, who is still standing there with the collar in his hand.

“I said put it on,” he snaps, flapping a hand irritably in Andry’s direction.

Andry looks at Thorne. The Winter King’s Wolf’s gold-brown face is still pallid and washed-out, dark circles still stark under his bright eyes, but now he seems to spark with nervous, jittery energy. Andry bows his head, tilts it a little to show his throat, and pitches his voice as soft and humble as he can. “Forgive me, my lord, I—believe the buckle is too much for me, at the moment.”

Andry doesn’t look up at Thorne, but he knows Thorne is looking at him properly now; he lets his mutilated wrist hover at his side, visible without waving it around in Thorne’s face and shouting about it, which a small well-ignored part of him might like to.

“Ugh,” Thorne says, “yes, all right, I’ve got it,” and stalks back up to Andry, and takes the collar back with hands that tremble, just a little.

Deferentially avoiding eye contact while a man has his hands around one’s throat is an art, and Andry feels he’s becoming quite adept at it. Though in fairness, Thorne seems to be avoiding Andry’s eyes as well, his gaze firmly on the collar. His hands, as always, are rough with calluses and slightly over-warm.

“Your Worship,” Thorne says. His voice is low, and a bit intense; Andry flicks his gaze at Thorne’s eyes and then away; the Wolf seems to be holding himself still only through a concentrated effort of will, practically vibrating with pent up frustration. “There’s a training hall here, no? For your guards and knights and whoever else?”

Andry’s instinct is to nod, but Thorne’s hands are still hovering at his throat; he says “Yes, my lord,” very respectfully instead.

“You know the way there?”

“There’s sparring space in the barracks and the courtyard, certainly, my lord.” Andry swallows under Thorne’s fingers. “There is also a small _Salle d’Armes_ in the east wing. It… has been used by the royal family, in the past. I’m sure it is… open for your use, now.”

Thorne smirks, dropping his hands from Andry’s neck. “A ‘Salle d’Arms’, eh?”

Andry blinks. “Oh. A… fencing room.” Thorne rolls his eyes, and Andry feels— slightly defensive. It’s the proper name for a fencing school; Thorne needn’t judge him for knowing the right names of things.

…Though of course Thorne is free to judge him for whatever he likes, Andry reminds himself coldly, when Thorne clips the leash on to the collar and loops it around his wrist.

——

It is… worse to stand in the Salle than Andry thought it would be. He hovers in the doorway, unconsciously massaging his truncated wrist above the cover. The metal always tingles a little against his skin, and he is hyper-aware of it now, because he spent many hours in this room, before, when “swordsman” was the one title he felt he had truly earned for himself.

Thorne hums thoughtfully at the sight of the room, dropping Andry’s leash immediately—it hits the floor at Andry’s feet, where it lays like a sleeping snake, temporarily inert but ready to strike if he makes any sudden movements. Andry stands very still while Thorne prods at the reed mats on the fencing floor and then immediately crosses the smallish room to pull a fencing foil free from the rack and twirl it around. His movements are smooth, if a bit wild, and after a moment of showy twirling he turns back to Andry, who tenses further.

Nervous energy in one’s captor is dangerous enough without their being surrounded by weapons. Andry stands very still and tries to look small and nonthreatening.

“Your Worship,” Thorne says, resting the blunted tip of the foil on the toe of his slipper like a proper fencing student. He narrows his yellow eyes at Andry, as though trying to see inside of him. Then he shakes his head in apparent frustration. “I’ve no eye for auras,” he says, eyes darting away as if this is an embarrassing failure on his part. “Have you any magic left in you at all, Highness?”

Andry has no eye for auras either, though Morden is theatrical enough with his that even Andry can see it. There’s no colored smokey light hovering around Thorne, as far as Andry can see, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

The memory of Morden Crane smiling and sending a burning jolt of magic into Andry’s skull rises up behind his eyes before he can stop it, and he drops Thorne’s gaze hastily, scratching at the place where the metal cover tingles and burns against the skin of his severed wrist. “No, my lord.” He clears his throat; sorrow is making his voice low and scratchy and he has no wish to share that with Thorne. “Not a drop, so far as I know.”

Thorne sighs. “I thought so,” he says. Then, “Here, Worship—spar with me.”

Andry looks up, startled. “Sir?”

“Raptor says you gave us real trouble when we took the tower. And you’re famous, here. I want to see.”

Andry blinks, then frowns and holds up his severed wrist. “My swordsmanship is likely not what it once was,” he says, unable to entirely keep the bitterness out of his voice.

Thorne rolls his eyes, and pointedly turns to place the sword foil back on the rack. “I know that, Worship. But I want to see your footwork and reflexes at least. Don’t you know anything about hand fighting?”

Andry shakes his head slowly. The Lady chose him early, but even before that it had always been assumed that he would bear the House’s magic someday, which meant he didn’t need any other combat skills, because he’d never need to fight without the Lady’s help. “No, my lord.”

Thorne sighs a little, then shrugs and gestures Andry closer. “Fine. I’ll teach you, then.”

Andry draws back in immediate suspicion. “What? Why?”

Thorne laughs, and the sound scrapes up Andry’s spine. “Because it will do me good to be better than _someone_ at _something_ for five bloody minutes if you don’t fucking mind,” he says, a bit hysterically.

It sounds—more honest than Andry was expecting. For the first time it occurs to him that Thorne’s invitation might be something other than a trap, that Thorne may be desperate enough for—something, Andry isn’t sure what—that an honest fight with a one-handed trophy-prince might actually satisfy him in some way.

Andry feels an unexpected stab of sympathy for the man, and squashes it down instantly. Thorne sympathizing with him is an asset he may be able to exploit; to sympathize with Thorne is the first step down a road that only ends in death or worse.

“If what you want is to win a fight, my lord, I suspect I can oblige,” he says softly, and this time when Thorne gestures him into the ring, he obeys.


End file.
